


All the King's Virtues

by Afterstory (poetic_devices)



Series: False Kings [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Comfort/Angst, Drama, Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, Some pining, Suggestive Themes, War, a lot of muttering on Merlin's part, historically inaccurate funtimes, sort of reincarnation but not quite?, through the decades, what happened during those centuries before Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 77,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_devices/pseuds/Afterstory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immortality comes with a multitude of new faces, old faces, new hopes, and new regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Still Waiting

The twelfth century is one of the worst so far, he thinks. The year is 1193 (or maybe 1194, he can never keep track these days), and for the most part it's been a fairly uneventful year. If you don’t count the ongoing third crusade and all the trimmings that come with war.

For as long as he can remember, he’s hated war. _Loathed_ it. The warriors and the kings are lying through their teeth when they say that this is all being done "in the name of God." They fight "with valor for the holy city," they draw blood "in the name of the Lord."

_This is for the good of the people of the Kingdom._

Nothing but lies.

No act of violence could _ever_ be in the name of God - or in the name of any deity that was believed to be the bringer of peace, the creator of the world and all its splendor. Then again, this God of theirs was rumored to have also created _man_ , so perhaps this entity was a vengeful one after all. Or just a right arse.

For some reason, the universe is pulling him to wherever conflict is the worst and where battles rage bloody and unholy, with the false promise of eternal life dangling just out of reach. Why, _why_ on earth would these poor bastards _want_ eternal life? Mortals really are incorrigible creatures. If that was really what they believed was being offered from this god of theirs, then their faith is as insane as it is violent. Merlin would just as happily give up his own immortality, if only so he never has to see another sword swung down upon the throats of innocents.

And still, no one comes to save these men and women from the slaughter. No honourable king rises to lead his own band of warriors to peace. Merlin stands alone.

He doesn’t want to choose sides. He doesn't want to fight.

**::{}{}{}::**

 

The year is 1509, and Catherine of Aragon is just in the middle of finishing her vows, pledging her love and loyalty to King Henry something-or-other. The fifth? No, this is the eighth... at least, Merlin's fairly sure. Merlin looks on with a dull sort of fascination as he stands in silence amongst the other richly garbed nobility, all whispering eagerly, all gossiping about the king's former lovers before the king himself can get close enough to hear anything incriminating. All of the onlookers are especially anxious to get a glimpse of the new, royal lady.

 _How many Henrys have there been, now?_ Merlin wonders idly, stifling a yawn quickly behind a hand as the royal newlyweds begin their stride - or perhaps a death march - elegantly back up the rose petal-laden aisle.

No doubt this queen will die _far_ too soon if the king has anything to say about her, or what sorts of children she should bear. No other unlucky women have been birthed the king a son so far.

Merlin continues to be curious as to why he ever took on this position in the first place. Sure, the pay is fine, and the private quarters are a bonus, but every time he listens to the king talk about his subjects, he feels sick. What sort of ruler cares only for wealth, when his subjects are dying of starvation and disease just outside the palace doors? No one could ever replace...

Well.

A collective gasp spreads through the chamber, breathy and excited, filled with admiration, when the aristocracy present for the wedding finally catch a glimpse of their newly wed king and his newly crowned queen.

The lady Catherine is fair, her hair pinned up with pearls and curled into ringlets for the occasion; her lips are painted the color of fresh blood, her hollow cheeks blushing faintly, colored undoubtedly from the nerves and from the attention of a room filled with powerful people. Catherine bears a striking resemblance to a high priestess from days past, or so Merlin thinks to himself from his place off to a corner in the spacious throne room. But instead of rich, raven-black tresses, this queen has hair the color of the sun before it sets over the horizon.

But there _was_ an even stranger coincidence, Merlin had realized, when he’d discovered that this woman had originally been married to some other prince named Arthur- that was, before said prince died five months after the marriage took place.

“Fine pair they make, aye, Morris?” an older man with crinkles around his eyes elbows Merlin without taking his eyes off the blushing young bride and not-so-young groom, velvety purple cap slipping a bit on his balding head.

“Yes, lovely,” he answers, trite and mostly uninterested.

“You all right, boy?” the councilman asks. The old man's expression is one of genuine concern, noticing Merlin’s look of total apathy.

“Just fine, Ellis. But thanks for asking.” The words hint towards irritation, but Merlin's tone can only be taken as _fond._

"Not been looking yourself these past few days. Something on your mind?"

Merlin can’t help but smile, although he's been feeling out of sorts all week and he knows it. Feels it. It's gotten worse, the longer he's remained in the palace. He notices the darkening marks under his eyes every time he passes a mirror; He's been growing more and more exhausted by the day, simply by staying here. It's as though something's been pulling at him, telling him to move on to another place.

His time here is almost done. He's needed elsewhere.

It's a shame, too. Ellis has really cared about him these past five years. The time spent with the oldest councilman at court have been a blessing, seeing as Merlin's found another person to learn so much from. Merlin has no qualms with playing the younger, sprightlier character, eager to learn as much as he can and let this older man - "older" in a loose sense of the word - take the lead and share his wisdom to a nice, young fellow with still-bright eyes and enough love and compassion in his heart to keep him sane.

But gods know the old councilman won’t last forever. Not like some people.

All Merlin says is, “Bit tired is all, can’t keep burning the candle at both ends, y'know?” He smiles back at the councilman Ellis and gives a shrug, the laces of his formal leather vest pulling at the shoulders.

“Been writing another speech I take it?” 

“It’s going to be a special one.” Oh, is it ever.

Ellis raises a pair of bushy, grey brows. “And why is that, just out of humble curiosity?” he inquires, a glint in his eye. Merlin shrugs again, but his gaze looks lost.

“Because-” he starts to answer, but just then another round of cheering and the tossing of flower petals cuts him off.

The king and queen pass them by with patient smiles plastered on their faces. Merlin can already see the pain dancing just beneath the brown pools that are the new queen’s eyes. Neither of the royal couple says a word. Once the noise dies down again, Merlin forces a chuckle and looks back at the councilman with half a smile tugging at his lips.

“Well?” the other man asks with blossoming impatience. “Don’t want to keep an old crow like me waiting forever y'know.”

At this, Merlin really laughs, his shoulders going up and down. But the seriousness returns just as quickly. “This is the last speech I'll be writing for the king.” Ellis looks like he’s about to interrupt but Merlin quickly continues. “I can’t keep working for him, Ellis, I fear I may go mad if I have to write another word for that barmy old—“

“ _Now_ now, you best watch it, yeh hear?" Ellis turns his head from side to side, possibly afraid that someone may have heard, but no one has. "There’s lots of people of importance in here lad.” Ellis raises a wrinkly, ring-laden finger to his lips. “Can’t have anyone hearing you talking about the _king_ in that way...”

The younger only sighs. “He's not my king any longer" he says with a frown, "Actually, if you want the whole truth, he never really was.” Ellis looks a bit bemused at this but hardly angry. He still casts a wary glance around to see if maybe someone's heard, but no one has.

“I cannot serve a man that I feel no loyalty to. You understand, I'm sure?”

After a moment, Ellis nods with slow resoluteness. "Aye. I understand it well."

Forgetting for a moment that the two of them are surrounded on all sides by loudly cheering (and somewhat inebriated) nobility, Ellis takes a step forward to embrace Merlin tightly, patting the man on the back before pulling away. He keeps his hands on Merlin’s shoulders, and his smile is wide and filled with kindness. Merlin can still remember a smile just like this one, but from a different face some centuries back. "Always had a wise head on yer shoulders, me boy. You just make sure it stays there, instead of under the king's chopping block. Promise me?"

Merlin nods, and as he does he thanks all the stars in the sky that, at the very least, he’s found people like Ellis in his lifetime to help him through. He still doesn't quite know where he'll go from here, or what he'll do, but he knows that serving this sorry excuse for a king is not his calling. If he has to wait another ten centuries, he'll wait.

But so help him, he's going to make the years in between count for something,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Updates for this might be a little tricky, but I always make them happen at some point. At worst, I'd say the longest wait would be five weeks (and that's pushing it). But I seem to be good about getting out a chapter at least once a month. Summer months should allow for more. That said, happy reading!


	2. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1535
> 
> Her name is Matilda, fifteen, pale and thin, an apprentice to a healer who works in a small village not far from where Camelot once stood.

The town is unassuming, quiet, and filled with sickness at every turn.

Merlin never strays too far from home; When he does, he can’t bring himself to stay away for too long.

He always comes back. Ever since becoming a student under Gaius, he'd made it his mission in life to help others, whether it was by becoming a doctor, a teacher, a friend, or whatever else could possibly be needed depending on the situation, and this town in particular has had more than its fair share of deaths caused by disease. So he’s going to do his best to help these men and women and children, crowding the filthy streets and packing themselves into whatever shelter they can find, even in the sewers reeking of rotting waste.

Upon his arrival to the… not entirely charming town of Goodwich, Merlin is granted the good fortune of meeting a scatterbrained, bony young girl with more stubbornness in her being than an angry mule, carrying a load of herbs and a foul-smelling eel in a wicker basket.

Or rather, Merlin runs into her - quite literally.

In a sullen mood and certainly _not_ watching where she’s headed, a dreadfully thin figure sails out of nowhere and runs headlong into Merlin, whose bag flies to the muddy ground as he goes to catch her, just before the girl can follow her own basket into the mud.

The girl throws her arms out, trying to find her balance, while her long, corn-silk braid falls over a shoulder, thwacking Merlin in the nose when he helps her up with steady hands, hardly needing to use more than one arm’s worth of muscle to hoist the fragile-looking figure upright. The girl’s basket lies haphazardly a few feet away, and the stinking eel, thank gods, is nowhere to be found, having been lost in the commotion of the morning hustle and bustle of townsfolk going about their daily business. No one pays attention to the girl or Merlin.

The girl quickly takes a step away from Merlin and, to his bewilderment, makes the sign of the cross over herself with a hand. Merlin frowns, thinking he must have given her quite the fright.

“E-excuse me. That was my fault,” she stammers. Her porcelain face reddens with embarrassment as she kneels down to collect her things. She nearly trips over her own two feet in the process and Merlin, anticipating it, steps forward in case he needs to catch her again.

When the girl's steadied herself, Merlin looks her over with an objective eye **:** there are streaks of dirt on her face, which isn’t unusual, her dress is worn and angrily frayed at the edges- also not abnormal, since every villager is wearing clothing that's in some degree of "worn out," looking tattered and frayed and patched so frequently that half the townsfolk appear to be wearing patchwork blankets.

Then Merlin gets a look at her shoes **:** good leather, properly fitted to her feet it would seem, and when she moves, they poke out from underneath the too-long skirt of her dress. Despite these surface details, Merlin can easily tell that the girl is decently better off than most of the villagers in this part of town. The material of her dress is just a little too nice, her hands a little too smooth and nails just a little too clean.

She’s not from around here. Either that, or she’s just moved here, and Merlin is suddenly very interested.

He should really know better by now, but really, there’s no harm in just having a quick chat with someone before going on his way, right? It’s not like he plans on getting to know her, or her life or… or her deepest thoughts and fears, or whether or not she thinks of what it might be like to die one day. Definitely not that. But he can’t help but wonder. People are just interesting like that.

“Forgive me," he answers, smiling kindly, "I was the one who wasn't watching where I was going." He carefully switches the blame to himself to spare her of any further embarrassment. The girl blinks a couple times, and it's obvious that she's not used to this sort of kindness. Her smile is only half as wide as Merlin's, but no less warm.

Merlin snatches up his bag from the ground before it can get trampled underfoot. “I’m Mer… um, I’m Merton” he offers, keeping a firm but gentle hand on the girl’s elbow while she steadies herself with her things slung over one arm. “Gaiusson. Merton Gaiusson. I’m actually here on a visit to this town’s resident healer. You wouldn’t happen to know of the person I’m talking about, would you?”

The girl's sharp eyebrows scrunch together, as if this man’s far more stupid than she cares to tell him.

“You mean Vigrayn?"

"If that's the name of the healer... yeah? Yes, I think so." He realizes he'd never actually gotten the name of the healer, but he's heard good things.

"Sure, I’m her apprentice.” Her response is casual, despite the circumstances. “Matilda.” She holds out a hand for Merlin to shake, businesslike and not entirely a lower-class gesture. The air about her is far too uppity for whatever status it is that she possesses, and she's most definitely not of royal birth. Not with those clothes, or shoes, even if they are nicely fitted. But it's the way she holds herself... the air about her says otherwise.

Merlin takes her hand to shake, and he finds that it’s much warmer than he’d expected. She’s very skinny, almost frail, and he’d thought that maybe her circulation would be more focused on her central organs, leaving her hands much colder. Must be the physician in him talking. But he's wrong - Matilda's hands are very warm and, he soon discovers once he’s let go, so is her smile.

“If you want to speak with Vigrayn, you can follow me” she tells Merlin, turning on her heel to lead the way. “I’m headed back to her hut right now.” She tilts her head to the side to show Merlin that he can follow behind her.

Merlin is happy to oblige and lets Matilda take the lead, watching her golden-bronze plait of hair swing back and forth between skinny shoulder blades. His grin spreads wider when he notices how she walks with her shoulders back and her chin up, like she’s not a healer’s apprentice, but a queen in a peasant girl’s body. Merlin’s warming to this place already.

**::{}{}{}::**

_Crrrickk..._

The patient screams.

The rag that she’s been biting down on for the past hour does nothing to muffle the noise. Merlin will never get used to that sound, no matter how many years he spends tending to the injured. It makes his blood chill.

The town healer and bone setter, Vigrayn, had said it would help for the young woman to bite down on something, but Merlin is the one biting his tongue to keep from saying what he really wants to say. As in, this lady knows absolutely nothing about the craft of healing, save for setting a broken wrist. Broken legs, however? A much touchier subject to broach when setting bone back to its normal position.

All right, so she doesn’t quite know _nothing,_ but compared to everything Gaius had ever taught Merlin, this woman would barely make it a week as one of the physician’s assistants.

Matilda stands off to the side with a fresh set of dressings for all the cuts and a bowl of hot water. Her lips move soundlessly, and Merlin suspects she’s praying-- again. He wants to ask what she’s praying, but decides against it. He himself has never had much use for praying, but this girl seems to pray recreationally, more so than anyone he’s ever met. And that includes a decent smattering of clergymen and women.

From what Matilda told him about herself on the way to the hut, Merlin now knows that she just moved here from a manor a two day’s journey away by carriage, having been a ward under the care of a priest for the past fifteen years of her life. And with a priest as a caretaker, she’s been taught the art of prayer- _constant_ prayer, it seems. Everything seems to warrant a religious reaction, whether it's a simple sign of the cross with three fingers, from her forehead, to chest to shoulders; or a complete prayer in Latin, with every word pronounced perfectly. She’s been far better educated than any other girl in this village, surely, although her knowledge of healing is basic at best.

Vigrayn, on the other hand, seems like she knows her stuff. Crude with her pain remedies and rudimentary in her anatomy of the human body, perhaps, but still decent enough to treat the people of the town. There would be many more dead in the streets without her, that's for sure. And Vigrayn has every right to help these people.

The woman can't be younger than her late thirties, maybe even early forties, with eyes the color of dirt and the strength of an ox hidden beneath a small but sturdy frame. Bone setting is, as Merlin recalls, a very hands-on business, and one requiring a great deal of strength.

It's a healing form that Merlin would very much like to learn, and has wanted to learn for some time; she'd told Merlin as much on their way to the healing hut.

Merlin had rarely gotten to help Gaius with setting broken bones. The knights were so well-trained that their footwork typically protected them from so much as a sprained ankle or a popped kneecap, which were painful to hear about but simple to fix. He'd only set a broken bone maybe three or four times in his life, and most of them were for arms, and one cracked jaw. If it meant helping more people than he could before, Merlin was going to learn this properly.

He’d been accepted into the Oxford school of medicine a few years prior, but declined at the last minute to pursue his travels instead. He could wait to go back to university. It was experience he needed right now, not books.

He has plenty of time.

Vigrayn takes the last of the dressings from Matilda and sets them over the tightly braced leg, making her anxious patient wince again. Then she rests one hand gently on the young woman’s shoulder and takes the rag away. “Ye’ll be good as new in a few weeks’ time, perhaps a few months. Best keep the dressings as fresh as ye can, I fear I ha’n’t got much to spare but you may stop by in a week and I’ll change them again.” The young woman on the table nods weakly but bravely and takes a moment to sit up, bringing up a hand to wipe away the perspiration that’s gathered at her hairline. The scarf wrapped around her head is soaked towards the front with sweat.

As an afterthought, Vigrayn adds, “You keep the pressure offa that leg and mayhaps it’ll return to the way nature intended. The bone was crooked to begin with, you were just lucky it was a clean break.”

With that, she takes a small flask of something that Merlin would rather be left in the dark about, and hands it to the young woman, who drinks gratefully before her mouth twists into a grimace. It’s probably some sort of liquor to help with the pain.

Prompted by the healer, Matilda puts the water bowl down and hurries forward to help the young woman up. The patient must be closer to Matilda’s age, perhaps nineteen or twenty. Meanwhile, Merlin watches, travel bags still slung over one shoulder, while the bonesetter quickly fetches a sort of cane from the corner with a hunk of wood attached to the top. It must be meant for going under the arm, to help the woman keep her weight off of the bad leg. He’s seen these sorts of canes before, here and there; Very efficient, he thinks to himself. But…

“…Maybe you should wrap a cloth around that top bit?” he notes casually, hoping the healer won’t snap at him for trying to tell her how to do her job.

“What’s that?” Vigrayn’s head whips around to take a good, long look at the man staring in the doorway, with his bags and his worn jacket and scarf. He hasn't put any of his things down yet for fear he might get a shouting at for cluttering the place.

Merlin does his best not to cringe while he watches the patient take the walking cane and painfully situate it underneath her armpit.

“I just thought maybe, um, it would be more comfortable for her if you wrapped a bit of cloth around the top part of the cane there?” He points to the object in question. “Those things can really hurt when you’re putting most of your weight on one of them.”

He swallows when Vigrayn glares at him. But after a second, the healer seems to realize he’s right. The younger woman is no doubt going to be in for even more pain, and it’s evident that she fears as much when her face loses what little color it has left at the prospect of  _more_ pain.

Curious, Vigrayn eyes her new visitor carefully.  “You think you know the first thing about medicine and healing, do ya?” she asks haughtily, wiping her hands down her smock-covered front and leaving an oily smear of some sort of herbal poultice behind.

Merlin shuffles from one foot to the other and silently wishes he had just gone and gotten the piece of cloth himself. “I’ve… been taught a fair amount, I think” he mutters inwardly, and Vigrayn only looks more skeptical. But with a firm nod, Matilda is taking a silent order from her mentor and soon finds the cloth, thick and gauzy to fit the purpose, and carefully wraps it around the top of the patient’s cane to alleviate any extra pressure. The woman re-situates the can under her arm with a look of relief.

“Thank ya kindly, and may the Lord bless ya,” the young woman manages to say to both Matilda and Merlin between shivers, and her accent hints at a heavy Irish background. So she’s not from around here, either. Matilda only smiles and nods, allowing the woman to lean her weight against her on their way out the door. Both Merlin and Vigrayn stand to the side and allow the woman to be led out. When the patient is finally gone, the healer turns to gaze up at Merlin, motionless in the doorway.

Her eyes narrow. “And you would be…?”

“Vigrayn, this is Merton” Matilda is quick to get introductions out of the way. From her sudden twitchiness, Merlin can only assume that Matilda is a little frightened of Vigrayn's quick temper. He presses his mouth into what he hopes is a smile. “He said he’s here to work for you and study bone setting under your guidance.”

The healer woman snorts, turning to clean up the medical supplies. “Ain’t barely any room in here for the two of us already. Can’t hardly feed Matilda here to begin with, why should I take _you_ in?” she asks, without taking her eyes off of her work.

“Please,” Merlin urges, “I’ve had a fair bit of training in the healing arts, and believe me when I say I can mix a remedy for a headache faster than you can say ‘magic.’” Vigrayn’s eyebrows shoot up, wrinkling her face even more.

"Ain't no such thing as magic," Vigrayn mutters, examing a soiled bundle of bandages with a critical eye. Her expression sours and she dumps the bundle into an empty bowl. 

“Duly noted," Merlin says, undeterred by the comment. A little humored, even. "And besides that, I have money. You needn’t trouble yourself with feeding me, I’m all set for a little while yet.”

Cautious and curious, the healer steps away from her busywork and stares the man down. “And how long is ‘a little while,’ might I ask?” 

“Maybe two months, perhaps more if you’ll allow it? I-“

“Lord!" Vigrayn's surprised outburst makes Merlin and Matilda both startle. "I hardly think I can manage one month, let alone-“

“Really m’am, please, if you would just listen. I can help - although I’ve no doubt that your business is already quite successful,” he motions vaguely to the small room, cramped with the table, two rickety stools and the ashy fireplace, “but you’ll have twice the patients recovering with another hand around."

Vigrayn _harrumph_ s, not quite believing such a claim; she doesn't know Merlin. For all she knows, he might only makes things worse. To be fair, there was once a time when she would have been entirely right in her suspicions towards Merlin, but that would have been many years ago. 

"What do you say? I won’t be any trouble to you at all, m'am, I give my word.”

Vigrayn seems to consider, running her hands down her smock again. Matilda waits nervously in her corner before going over to tend to the fire in the fireplace.

“All right,” the woman quips, her stoick demeanour deflating a little, and Merlin’s own shoulders slump with relief. “But ye must be prepared to do every last bit of the work I give ye, understood?”

“Very much so. Thank you, ma’m.”

“Hmph! Matil _da_ ,”

Matilda twists to face them from her kneeling position by the fire. “You show Robert here-"

"Merton, actually" Merlin says it before he can stop himself, and immediately shrinks back, wishing he'd said nothing.

Vigrayn scowls, but other than that she ignores him. "Just show him to the storage room before I change my mind. He’ll have to make himself at home there.” She sniffs in disgust, still too dignified to look ashamed of not being able to properly house their new guest. But she says further, “’Fraid there ain’t any room in here. Get some rest, both of ye, we’ve all got an early morning tomorrow.”

**::{}{}{}::**

That night, Merlin doesn’t sleep. He’s brought his own thin sleeping mat with him, and with the help of Matilda he’s found himself a big enough niche in the storeroom to turn in for the night.

The tiny room smells strongly of herbs and fragrant remedies, and he recognizes many of the scents assaulting his sinuses. There’s sage, rosemary, something that may very likely be wolfsbane, poppy flower concentrate, and loads more, filling up the vials and tins lining the wooden shelves. Merlin wonders if perhaps Vigrayn might allow him to purchase a few of these things, they would truly come in handy in the future. As nice as magic is, Merlin believes in more natural remedies.

Besides that, he can’t just go around magicking every sick person well again- He learned that rule the hard way.

He tosses and turns about on his mat, wishing his tired eyes would just shut already. His trip from the Irish countryside had been long, and while he enjoyed travel, he felt like he was much more suited for remaining in one place for longer stretches of time. He’s come to this village because it’s close to where his beloved kingdom once stood, proud and strong. And now, he can’t even fall asleep. Not even when he’s such a short distance from home.

**::{}{}{}::**

“Have you heard the news? King Henry’s declared himself the head of the Church.” Matilda looks more excited than Merlin thinks she should be. All because some king’s gone and decided he also has a say in religion as well as politics? It sounds like a recipe for disaster more than anything.

Matilda has just returned from her daily errands, plopping her basket onto the table, filled with a few potatoes, a meagre loaf of bread, some sort of vegetable Merlin can’t place, and a few bundles of herbs he’s never seen before.

“Isn’t that something?” she asks with big eyes.

Merlin snorts air through his nose. “It’s... something all right” he mutters, hoping he doesn’t sound as bitter as he feels. The fire is just barely keeping the room warm enough, which isn’t helping his mood.

Matilda ignores the comment and sits herself down at the table, removing the threadbare winter cloak from her shoulders and laying it over the back of her chair. Her nose is frost-bit and pink, as are her cheeks. It’s January, two months since Merlin’s arrival in Goodwich, and Vigrayn has not been disappointed by his performance as her assistant. Sometimes, Merlin almost wonders if the woman has grown jealous of his abilities in medicine. He doesn’t necessarily try to do anything too out of the ordinary, but ever since he’s come, not one patient has left the healer’s hut unsatisfied.

Matilda sniffles once and shivers, before continuing, “I saw my friend Thomas in the market, and he told me the news himself. A very progressive king, I think.” She nods to herself, satisfied with sharing her thoughts, then stands up to tend to the pot hanging over the dwindling fire. Merlin watches her for a moment before getting lost in his own little world.

Noticing the look in his eyes, Vigrayn puts down a mortar and pestle she’s been working away at and comes over to the table.

The woman looks at the girl poking at the shriveled up log in the fireplace, then at Merlin. “Aye, she’ll make a fine bone setter, I think” she murmurs, pulling Merlin out of his bleak reverie to listen. “With the proper training. Give it time, and those skinny arms will grow mighty strong indeed. Just wish I had enough to keep her fed and watered proper.” She scratches at her chin before swiping away the thinning hair from her face. The candlelight illuminates her ruddy complexion and Merlin’s stark, pallid one. The way the candle flickers causes the shadows to dance across his face and make his cheekbones look more sunken, his face more gaunt. Vigrayn stares at him for a bit from the corner of her eye, and she wonders.

Surely, he can’t be all he claims to be. She has lived long enough that she’s seen more than her fair share of pain. The human being sitting beside her has seen more than he lets on, she’s sure of it. She tries to imagine the life he had before he came here. He doesn’t share much about his family, only that both his parents are deceased, and that he lived under the care of a royal physician for a time. Fancy indeed, so why has he come here? Wouldn’t he rather live the good lifestyle he must have been accustomed to in a _castle_ , of all places? Why here?

“She’s strong,” Merlin remarks, more to himself than to Vigrayn. He doesn’t mean to say it out loud but he does, and Vigrayn hears him perfectly.

“What do you mean by that?” the healer scoffs, both their voices quiet enough that Matilda won’t hear them. “D’ye not see those twiggy limbs?" she gestures towards the fireplace with a handful of thyme. "She ain’t got any meat on those bones yet. Think ya may be blind. And considering you’re a fair bit younger than I am, _that_  can’t be a good sign. Premature loss of sight won't help you in finding any other positions that pay good money. You're too young yet to stop working.”

Merlin snorts, and hopes the woman doesn’t take offense. Oh, how wrong she is about that. The only thing young about him is his looks, but he’s in no hurry to divulge any personal information to the formidable bone setter- one who could probably snap him in half with one hand as long as he doesn’t fight back. “I only meant that she’s a tough one. Matilda’s special-“

“Oh, don’t you go giving me that rubbish. The girl already acts all self-righteous as it is, all saintly and too good for this world - she already thinks she’s special. Don't encourage her.”

Her interruption is interrupted.

“No, I mean she’s steadfast,” Merlin goes on. “She... I don't know? She endures, I suppose. A girl her age and she’s already seen so much. She only moved here half a year ago, and she seems to have adapted well already. She’s learning fiercely and she wants to please you. I can tell.”

The healer says nothing.

Matilda has gotten the fire going nicely again and shuffles back to the table with her arms wrapped around her for warmth.

“Supper’s almost ready. Hope you’re all hungry,” she announces, smiling happily.

**::{}{}{}::**

Vigrayn goes to bed early, taking up her place on her sleeping mat at the far end of the main room. No more patients for the night, she grumbles before snuffing out the candle set down in the corner of the room.

Merlin and Matilda sit alone in the room at the other end, quietly talking together and sharing what they can about themselves, weaving in the tidbits of information between a steady stream of conversation. He feels better than he has in some time. It’s been... he's not sure how long, but it's been a while since Merlin felt comfortable enough to speak freely with someone like this, like a friend to a friend. Merlin just wants to know what someone else might do in his position.

“Matilda," he begins, quiet, "who do you pray to… when something’s been lost for a very long time?” His question lingers in the air, no more than a whisper, while Matilda looks at him from across the table, concern showing in her furrowed brow.

“Saint Anthony is the patron of lost things. Why? What’ve you lost?” she asks. “Perhaps I can help you look for it.”

With a shake of his head, Merlin says, “It’s not exactly a trinket, something you can see or touch. More of a feeling. A concept.” Matilda looks completely bewildered, but lets Merlin finish. “I’ve lost something very dear to me and I don’t know what to do.” He sighs, “It’s been some time since I’ve seen…” he trails off, not wishing to continue. The girl across from him only looks more confused, but if she _is_ confused she doesn’t say so.

All she says is, “Well, if Saint Anthony isn’t enough, then you should pray to the Lord himself. I know of quite a few Saints” she claims, proud, sticking her chin up like a self-righteous priest. But after a pause, she lowers it and continues, “But I don’t know of one who can bring back this… _feeling_ you’ve lost. Could you be any more specific? Is it love? Oh, or maybe it’s fear? I wouldn't be surprised, many men suffer from lack of fear. It's what gets them killed, in the end." Merlin looks only marginally affronted. She's absolutely right, of course, but he says nothing. "They say that people who have no fear are very stupid, and meet horrible, ghastly ends because of their recklessness.” A frown tugs down the corners of her small mouth when Merlin only shakes his head again.

“It’s not those. I’m not stupid… and of course I haven’t forgotten how to love,” his shoulders hunch forward a touch and his voice lowers, forcing Matilda to lean in closer in order to hear.  “It’s more like I’ve lost my sense of… my sense of hope, I suppose.” He runs a hand right over the candle flame, making it dance. He doesn’t use magic, of course, but it draws the girl’s attention, seeing him put his hand so close the flame.

“Hope... What for?” she asks. The room is now comfortably warm, their bellies full from a hearty dinner. She sighs and rests her cheek in her hand with her arm propped up on the table. "I mean, it's perfectly natural for people to lose hope every once in a while," she says, and bless her because she sounds so understanding and kind, "when things get to be too tough, or when a loved one passes on. What've you lost hope in?"

“A lot of things,” Merlin says, his voice nearly cracking, so quiet that Matilda has to work to hear him. “Hope for people, hope for the future of this world… that sounds depressing, I know, but,” he laughs humorlessly, “humanity’s really gone to ashes these past few centuries.”

There’s a long pause, in which he stares pensively at nothing in particular, his gaze somewhere far away.

He looks even more tired, if that’s even possible. The shadows underneath his eyes are more prominent in the low light. Outside, the sky has gone completely dark. Only the fire in the back of the room and the two candles in the rusty candlesticks on the table give off light of any kind.

Matilda raises an eyebrow, her frown growing. “How so?” She pushes her braid over her shoulder and sits up straighter. She doesn’t like how he speaks about humanity. Like he’s not a participant, merely an _observer_. “I mean certainly, there are many people who could do with more food and better medicine, but look at what we have!” She makes a vague gesture with her hands, eyes bright for a moment. Then she remembers that Vigrayn is sleeping and she lowers her voice to a whisper. “The Church is growing, medicine’s improving, the Oxford school is making grand strides in research for all sorts of afflictions, and of course we have our Lord to guide us through the difficult times. What reason have you for despising humanity so?” She glowers from her seat, arms crossed.

Merlin has a funny feeling, right in this moment, when he looks at her. For some reason, he desperately wishes he could have met this girl much earlier than two months ago. Clearing his throat, he attempts to explain what it was he meant.

“It’s not meant to be such a personal accusation, I only mean that not _once_ have I ever seen mankind at peace with one another, without war, without _violence”_ the words coming from his mouth sound hoarse, pained. _“_ Humanity continues to battle over poorly conceived notions of morality, and look what we’ve got to show for it. More death and more suffering. Why do you think we’re making progress with medicine? Why do you think those scholars are trying so hard to find solutions to these problems? Because we _need_ it.”

Merlin’s eyes are dark, staring daggers back at the young girl, who suddenly looks much more uneasy. She fidgets in her seat, but Merlin doesn’t stop. “We _need_ that progress, we _need_ that research, because without it… without it we would fight ourselves into extinction. Humans would be no more, all because of other humans.”

Matilda takes in everything Merlin’s told her, pensive in her seat. Flames from the small fire in the fireplace crackle somberly behind her. But she still looks unconvinced. And, to prove this, she suddenly replies, “And yet, humanity continues to exist and grow, all because of more humans. I think it would do you some good to pray, Merton. You’re not thinking of the good, only the bad. Humans are strong, we’ve survived this long, haven’t we?”

Merlin doesn’t know how to answer. She’s right, of course, but his body language remains unchanging.

“And I _know_ that tons of people are very dumb, and they go to war and rip each other’s throats out for the ‘good of the country’ or what have you, but there are brilliant minds out there. You don’t have to be God to see that.”

Merlin “hmm”s to that, folding his hands in his lap. After a pause he changes the subject all of a sudden, looking back to the candle on the table when he sighs, “Matilda, I’ll be leaving soon.”

She’s not expecting that. “What? When?”

He shakes his head. “Something’s been tugging at the back of my mind. I have to go somewhere, and my time here was good, great even, but it looks like you and Vigrayn are both much better off now. Your training has improved so much, I think you’ll be enough help for her now." His mouth presses into a thin line. "You don’t need me anymore.”

The look on Matilda’s face is a mixture of hurt feelings and realization. “Wait, you came here because you thought we needed you?” she asks, “Not because you needed training?”

“Do I seem like I’ve needed any training?” Merlin manages a smile for her. “I wanted to learn more about the trade of bone setting, and that was something I never got to learn back when I was under the care of my mentor in… in the kingdom I lived in before.” He doesn’t meet her gaze for a second. “I don’t know why I came here in particular, but I just felt like I had to help, in any way I could. Am I making any sense?”

Matilda nods. Then shakes her head no. Torn, she finally comes to her conclusion. “Well, I’m glad you came, no matter the reason. I do have one more question, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve been here for two months now, and not once did you ever say how old you were.”

This earns a chuckle from Merlin. “That’s not a question.”

“But how old _are_ you?”

"Twenty three."

"Look me in the eye. Do you truly think I believe you for a minute, Merton?"

"Believe what you want. That's how old I say I am," Merlin insists, grinning smugly. He does have to hand it to her, the girl is sharp.

"But it's not the truth, is it?" Grey-blue eyes sear through him, and Merlin brushes away the passing thought that perhaps Matilda has a bit of magic in her as well.

For a brief moment, Merlin wants to let his guard down and tell her everything. He feels comfortable with Matilda, friendly and safe and there’s a mutual understanding- They get each other.

But after a second thought, all he can say is, “Some people are better off not knowing some things. You’re a strong girl, Matilda, don’t let these people bite your head off when I leave, okay?”

Matilda crosses her arms and raises her chin with disdain, but her next words are said in good humor. “Please, it takes more than some broken bones to hurt me.”  

**::{}{}{}::**

The night of Merlin’s discussion about kings, age, and broken bones, Matilda dreams.

In sleep, she can feel everything like it’s real, and happening right there, before her eyes.

Someone whispers to her, telling her something with such urgency that she wants to help them. The voice contains an anguish that makes her want to cry. The words must be something important, for reasons she can't comprehend, but she can’t quite grasp at them.

Her vision stops working. Breathing feels difficult, too difficult, and the last thing she sees before the world goes black is a pair of wet, bright blue eyes.

The image changes, and now all she sees is murky blue and green in all directions. Everything is hazy and the light is too low. She can't breathe.

A sharp pain in her chest makes her wake with a shout.

Deathly afraid that she’s woken up Vigrayn, she slaps a hand over her mouth to stop any further sound from escaping. She’s shaking, she realizes, and her palms are slick with a cold sheen of sweat. Her breathing is too fast, she tries to wrap her head around the dream but there’s no sense behind it, other than the feeling that something horrible has just occurred.

It feels like - Like....

It feels like she just died.

With some apprehension, she manages to fall asleep again, dark and dreamless, enveloping her.

That morning when she wakes again, Merlin is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, already getting philosophical and it's only chapter 2. That said, hi friends! So, right now I know that this story is just getting started, but I greatly appreciate feedback of any kind! (So long as it's not harassment or something like that). I'll attempt to update regularly, normally on Wednesday nights late (as in, early early morning Thursdays) or weekends. I will really do my best. Also, those of you who've read the book Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman, I hope you're enjoying the references! Also, thanks for reading!  
> -An  
> link to an illustration for the chapter: http://animationfanatic.tumblr.com/post/132447269666/upon-his-arrival-to-the-not-so-charming-town-of


	3. Chivalry

All things considered, London really isn’t too bad. Not as bad as he remembers it to be, at the very least. The sewage problem seems to have improved, if only by a marginal amount. And the market has much more to offer since the last time he took a gander at the stalls, back when he visited London fifty years ago on business.

That hadn't exactly ended well - magicians who send other people on wild goose chases are tricky bastards indeed. Merlin still can't believe he'd fallen for the old Philosopher's Stone legend. Again.

But the magicians learned their lessons soon after. Merlin still has no regrets about hexing the cult of old magicians to speak backwards for a year.

So much has happened since then, and even before then. So much happened _especially_ during these past two hundred-odd years.

Above all else, the Black Death was a curse that Merlin will never completely get over.

He will _never_ forgive Morgana.

The Plague couldn't have been an accident, he would be an idiot to think otherwise. Merlin knows that somehow Morgana, or perhaps someone like her, was responsible for the tragedy that the sickness brought when it swept through towns, when it swept through _countries_ , when it snatched up lives that Merlin was only just beginning to get to know.

He continues to find himself left with no one, every time he feels like maybe things are looking up.

Why?

They were all just... gone.

_Why?_

No, that witch had somehow been reaching out from beyond the grave to torture him even more, here in this endless cycle, this life that had so little meaning without the one person who mattered.

But Morgana? She had followers, even long after she died. Powerful followers, ones who took the legend of Camelot to heart and decided they would rather be on Morgana's side than on the side of a fallen king who never lifted the ban on magic or the Old Religion.

He can’t go on like this, he can’t keep seeking out all of the problems and trying to fix them when he knows he doesn’t have the will or the power to hunt down this harbinger of death, because he knows it’s impossible.

Morgana is dead, and he has done all he can to be rid of her for good.

He needs to rest. He deserves a rest. _Every_ one does. He's pretty sure that working in the field of medicine and healing for over seven hundred years has earned him a bit of a break.

A little more than six decades since his productive trip to the town of Goodwich, and he’s finally returned to some familiar scenery.

******

The thing that surprises Merlin, interestingly enough, is just how _popular_ some of the most unexpected things have become. Like extra-thin swords - rapiers, they’re calling them. And the newest music - the viol and the lute are all the rage, apparently - and not to mention the newest clothing.

And theatre. He never would have guessed. But then, maybe he should have expected the theatre’s imminent explosion. After all, comedy and tragedy had been around for centuries, what was stopping people from expanding on the medium? The stage was a universe away from reality - people could never get enough of watching other people, like themselves, get tied up in both hilarious and tragic situations. The theatre provided an escape from their regrettable lives spent on wherever-the-hell street, no-way-in-god’s-name avenue, or I-wish-I’d-just-been-born-a-farmer lane, in the lower-class squalor of London towns.

And those are the people who frequent the productions which have rapidly been rising in popularity, courtesy of a couple new-name playwrights with a lot to say, and a lot of clever ways to say it.

Merlin never knows what to expect, every time he tries to predict what the future will be like, ten years, fifty years, two hundred years ahead. The sixteenth century, like all the others, holds plenty of surprises- good and bad. Merlin prays that 1594 will be just a smidge more decent that the 1570s. The fashion back then was pretty terrible. He’s had to watch trends come in and out for quite some time, and he _still_ can't comprehend the meaning behind corsets. He hopes that trend will disappear soon.

Oh, and of course, the threat of the deadly sickness looming over the city.

On a cloudless, sunny day with the wind light at his back, Merlin finds himself walking around the London area on the south bank of the Thames, in search of something interesting to do.

He’d already had a go at joining a guild, which had been all the rage in the fourteenth century but had begun to grate on Merlin’s nerves, ever since he’d attempted to apply as an apprentice in an apothecary – and was promptly turned away by a group of stuffy, ‘well-read’ older men who held little to no regard for the youth of the day. Not realizing, of course, that Merlin may have had a few years on them to begin with.

The people of London are too busy going about their own lives to care that he’s been meandering the streets for a good two hours now. He keeps on staring at the thin blades hanging from the belts of men of the upper class, wondering why on earth everyone is carrying around such pathetically thin swords and rarely using them.

People don’t go to war as much as they used to. Granted, there’s still fighting and more blood than he would rather be in the presence of, but the whole kill-your-neighbor-because-they-looked-at-you-funny concept is starting to make its decline. It hasn’t stopped, oh no, but Merlin has noticed the incidents (the public ones, anyway) lessening in frequency.

As he stops to examine a street vendor selling ‘rare’ cooking spices and herbs, a shout makes him turn his head.

“On guard, you bloody show horse!”

“On guard yourself, you bloody Frenchman!”

_What in the world…_

“Oho _ho_! Sinking that low are we, DeLorean?” A short man with a beard-mustache combination swings one of those blasted rapiers in the air with a dramatic flair about him, his expression taunting while he shouts and jeers at the man opposing him, also brandishing a weapon of his own.

“Never, I am a man of chivalry if nothing else!” The other man, taller and clean-shaven with dark, curly hair tied back from his face, takes a quick step back to avoid being smacked soundly with the flat of the bearded one’s blade.

“Aye, well there certainly isn’t much else going for you, eh? A _ha_!”

The short one attempts an attack at the taller of the two’s stomach, but the opponent retreats gracefully and catches the advancing weapon with his own, pressing it to the side and riposting towards Beard’s chest.

Parry, parry, attack, lunge, passé, “Missed again, do your parents know they birthed a bawdy strumpet?” Merlin cracks a grin at the creative insult, his attention fully captured by the unexpected show.

“Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”

“That wasn’t even your line, you never got a part in that production!”

“Aye, so it would seem! And yet I’m sure you’d bite your thumb, were your hand free of that sorry excuse for a rapier!” and so on, their thin foils whipping around and smacking blades, never making it to the intended target quite on time. It looks like a beautifully choreographed dance. And the dancers sure are making each other work.

“Riposte! Riposte, I said ri _poste!”_ screeches the shorter man with the snippety voice and scruffy beard, goading on his sparring partner, who grins widely and, to Merlin’s amazement, seems to throw all caution to the wind, charging the short one head on and using all manner of otherworldly maneuvers. His opponent, taken by surprise, struggles to keep up, but continues to shout in case anyone is listening,

“You call _that_ a riposte? Pathetic! Ha!” He makes a skillful jab, but the move is easily blocked.

The taller of them feints left, and lands a strike at the shorter one’s thigh with the flatter edge of the blade.

“That’s off target, I thought you said you weren’t going to sink to that level!”

“And I haven’t, my dear friend. You’re the one with all the low moves.”

“Not as low as your mother, DeLorean!” The shorter man cackles and swipes the foil through the air, making a very satisfying _swishing_ sound.

“ _Heeyah_!”

Merlin snickers from his spot a safe distance away from the clashing weapons. He hopes they haven’t heard him. Probably not, since they both seem to be a bit preoccupied at the moment.

The short one swings his flimsy weapon upwards in a strong parry, this time successfully riposting and tapping the so-called DeLorean squarely over his collarbone.

Merlin watches raptly, a one-man audience standing on the little side street by the Thames. Not many others are paying the sparring men any attention. Merlin is at a loss as to why no one else is watching, nor cheering, something which this fight certainly deserves. It’s wildly entertaining- or at the very least, the jokes are excellent. The man with the beard knows some fine swear words, and other insults besides.

Another blow to the gut this time, struck by the taller man, and his partner growls but lowers his blade just as the other does, and they both salute each other before tucking the rapiers back into the loops on their belts.

“I had you, I tell you! Don’t think I’ll go easy on you next time DeLorean.”

“Whatever you say, Smithe.”

Unable to help himself from doing so, Merlin applauds enthusiastically when he sees the men put away their weapons.

The two street fighters turn around to view their spectator.

“…Who’re you?” the bearded one (Smithe, was it?) huffs as he pushes sweat-soaked, frizzy hair away from his sun-tanned face. He’s not old, he can’t be more than thirty-five, give or take.

“Morris” Merlin is quick to reply. He’s been using this new name for a good twenty years, after he stammered it out on accident when caught off guard by a woman in a market, asking who he was and whether or not he would be interested in purchasing lavender soap. He’d answered with “Morris,” then said no thanks to the soap. But the name called back memories from a century ago, and it felt nice to hear it. So it sticks. “A visitor here, just passing through. On my way to find an inn, actually, been needing to stop for a bit to rest.”

Short-and-bearded whips out a kerchief from the breast pocket of his tunic and steps away for a moment. The other man holds out a hand, which Merlin shakes, and he smiles warmly.

“How long are you staying in London?” he asks. “Any interest in seeing some of the sights? I could show you around.” He takes heavy breaths, but as tired as he is from the swords match, he sounds sincere, and the look on his face says as much.

Merlin is grateful for the offer, flattered that a stranger would even give him the time of day, but he also feels like he’s imposing, coming out of nowhere to watch the sparring match and introducing himself to a perfect stranger on the side streets of London.

“No more than a week,” he answers. “And that’s very kind, but you don’t need to do that. I’ve seen London many times, trust me.” He smiles humbly and is about to turn around and be on his way, but the towering pillar of a man waves a hand dismissively before running forward, stopping Merlin from getting away.

“I doubt you’ve been to the Globe before, it’s worth seeing!” he offers, and Merlin can’t seem to want to say no to the man’s generosity towards him, a complete stranger. “I’m DeLorean, by the way. Niam DeLorean. Did you enjoy our little show?” he asks, eyebrows raised expectantly. The sunlight hits his brow just so that the sweat glistens dramatically off dark skin. Merlin’s own brow furrows.

“Show? I thought…” He raises a finger and points as inconspicuously as he can towards the shorter man, who still seems to be catching his breath.

“Thought we were, what… fighting? As in, _actually_ fighting?” Catching the look on Merlin’s astonished face, Niam throws his head back and laughs. When he stops, he takes a breath before explaining, “You know, I think that’s the greatest compliment I’ve ever received on my sword skills. _Stage_ fighting, that was!” He tries to gauge a reaction from the man with raven hair and a frayed scarf. He can tell he’s holding Merlin’s interest. “But I _am_ more than a little pleased that you thought it was the real thing!”

“Sorry, ‘e thought what now?” The shorter man has been listening in, nearly as stunned as Niam DeLorean that someone was impressed with their match. Dabbing a kerchief at his nose and along his hairline, he takes a look at Merlin before asking again, “You thought what? That we were-“

“Really fighting, yes Leo!” Once the shorter friend of Niam’s walks over, he receives a joyful clap on the back.

“Bloody chickens an’ hens, I never ‘eard _that_ one before.”

Merlin chuckles. “Looked like you two were having quite the time, I’ll say that much.”

Niam nods sagely, turning serious for a moment, replying, “Oh yes, it’s all good fun, and quite a bit of work.” He wags a finger in mischief. “But you know what they say! All the world is a stage!”

The man called Leo narrows his eyes. “Who says that?” he asks dubiously.

“Will, of course.”

“Been speaking to Will again, have you?”

Not knowing who this “Will” could be, Merlin stands at a loss while the two men begin to bicker.

“I _told_ you, he’s been keeping in touch. Told me I might have a good shot at getting the lead role in a new play he’s writing! Apparently, I’m perfect for the role!” He gives Merlin a sideways glance, remembering that he has an audience, even if it’s only a small one. “He told me he saw me acting down at the Merrymakers Theatre for upcoming thespians, and he was impressed. Wants me to audition for him next month! Would you believe it?”

“I never believe anything Will has to say.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I think he’s touched in the head, that’s why.”

Niam throws his head back again in another of his wild laughs, and positions a hand over the pommel of his rapier. “I’ll show _you_ touched in the head!” he cackles when Leo grips the hilt of his own weapon, but this time, Merlin is quick to intervene.

“Hey hey hey! I thought you two weren’t actually fighting?” He shoulders his bag more firmly before throwing his arms out, ready to pull the men away from each other. He decides against trying any magic, even though he knows he’s not physically strong enough to do much with his wiry arms and thin build. But an intervention isn’t needed.

Niam, shocked by Merlin’s comment, gapes at the young man, then at Leo. “What? We’re not!” He lifts his hand away from his foil. “It’s just for show, honestly, have you never met a thespian before?” He stares, waiting for Merlin to answer.

Relieved that these two aren’t actually planning to kill the other, Merlin shrugs. “A few, but not as enthusiastic as you two, I have to say.” He cracks a grin.

The two thespians laugh good-naturedly, and Merlin follows suit. These men are all right. Well, maybe Niam more so than Leo, as far as he can tell. Then Merlin remembers that he really does need to look for an inn, since he’s doubtful any innkeeper would stay up late just to take him in at a last-minute request. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to be going. It was nice meeting the two of you.”

“What?” Niam looks practically devastated, which stuns Merlin, considering they haven’t exactly known each other very long to begin with. “Must you go already? I thought I might show you the Globe theatre, you strike me as someone who fancies a good show!” he cracks his knuckles enthusiastically. “Please stay, Leopold here has to get back to his teaching” he motions to the shorter man.

“Teaching?” Merlin’s eyes turn to Leopold, who clasps his hand behind his back and puffs out his chest a bit.

“I am a professor of the arts,” the shorter man informs Merlin with a hint of pride, “and just at the moment I am a tutor. Rent does not pay for itself, as I’m sure you’re well aware.” He nods solemnly to Merlin, then to Niam, and with that, he struts off in the opposite direction, away from the throes of the marketplace.

Merlin stares after him until Niam pulls his attention back.

“Really, I want to show you what the artists of London have to offer! To be passionate in the arts is to be passionate for living, eh?” He throws his hands up to the heavens, yet another laugh escaping him. Merlin sighs, and Niam frowns. “Something bothering you?” he asks, unabashedly curious.

“Nothing, it’s just… I _do_ need to find a place to stay before to gets too late.” Niam’s face lights up again.

“Oh! Is that all?” he laughs, and Merlin isn’t sure how to answer. “You are more than welcome to spend your London visit with me and my friends! It’s just the three of us, down on Moore street, me, Leo, and Adam. Space isn’t much, but we make the most of it.” The paler of the two men gawks, at a loss for words. This man is too kind, Merlin thinks to himself, _surely_ he can’t mean it…

“How long did you wish to stay in London?”

Gathering his thoughts, Merlin decides on the most reasonable answer. “A week, like I said before. No more than that.”

“Excellent, I absolutely insist that you stay with us.”

“I couldn’t-“

“Ah ah, I’ve already offered. Please, as a friend to a friend, you must let us show you some London hospitality.”

That’s an oxymoron if he’s ever heard one, Merlin decides, thinking back to all his misadventures in London in the past. But in the end, he figures it can’t hurt to accept the offer. And Niam had just called him a friend. He hopes this isn’t some cruel joke the universe is playing on him.

******

“Nonsense, you’ll have my room!”

“Oh no no, really, I couldn’t-“

Merlin looks around the small space. Niam was right when he said it wasn’t much, just a spot stuck between a glassblower’s and a pottery shop. Two tiny bedrooms and a kitchen, which has a sleeping mat rolled up in the corner. Obviously, this place wasn’t meant for more than one or two people.

He takes a peek into the pot hanging in the fireplace. Empty.

“Please, I insist. Any friend of the arts is a friend of mine! True, we’re not paid grand sums of money, but we do that which we have a great passion for. We live for the theatre. Act to live and live to act!” His laugh is deep, cheerful and warm. “Eh?”

Niam, Merlin has figured out since he first met the man, is relentless in seeking out every joy in life and making the most from what he has. He’s generous, hospitable, quite hilarious, and all-around the chivalrous gentleman. And a thespian. This is a combination that Merlin has certainly never encountered before.

 “I appreciate all of this, sir-“

“Pfft! _Sir._ You’re funny, mate. Just call me Niam!” The good-natured smile is infectious.

Merlin asks him, “So, have you been living in London long?”

Niam says he has, and that he met Adam and Leo five years ago, all aspiring actors, all looking to make it in theatre. Niam ended up being the only one who got any real gigs. Granted, they’ve all been as a stage manager or as a stage-fighting coordinator, but he gets to work in the theatre, and sometimes he gets a role or two.

“And really, who can say they have the opportunity to do what they love for a living? The life of a thespian is a life of ups and downs.” Niam shrugs happily, and offers to take Merlin’s bag.

Merlin refrains from bringing up Niam’s claim not two minutes ago when he said the actors are not exactly making an extravagant living.

“Please, make yourself comfortable Morris. I’ll put on some water, we’ll have tea and you can tell me about where you’re from, yeah?” He gives Merlin a look that tells him to wait right there, and that he means it when he says to make himself at home.

******

It’s market day.

Merlin decides to take a stroll around the area, he’s never been to this part of London before – or perhaps he has, and maybe things just look different. He’s too busy looking through the windows of a promising-looking apothecary to notice anyone in front of him until it’s too late.

With a poorly chosen step, he bumps into someone on the street, just next to a stall displaying brightly plumed quill pens and fancy inkwells.

The poor bystander that he’s run into, an alarmed looking woman, turns around and backs away, quickly apologizing. Merlin stammers his own apology, wishing words weren’t suddenly so difficult. In his haste, he accidentally bangs his hip into the side of the stall and suppresses a hiss of pain, and in the process earns himself a few harsh words from the vendor working the stall.

To his surprise, the woman he's bumped into actually laughs. More than a little embarrassed, Merlin promptly pushes away from the stall before he can cause further harm. “Sorry m’am, wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Quite all right, love” she doesn’t look one bit flustered, and reaches out to take Merlin’s hand while he tries to regain all of his coordination. He used to be able to stand well enough on his own two legs, what the hell happened?

She’s dressed nicely enough, and looks around her late thirties, maybe forty. The woman fixes the skirt of her dress, and Merlin smooths his hands down his own shirt, wondering how unkempt he must look compared to her. He knows his hair is probably a mess, he hasn’t exactly combed it recently. Meanwhile, hers is plaited neatly around her head, light brown and wispy.

“Anne,” the woman tells him before he can say a word. “What’s yours?”

“My name?” Then Merlin has to keep from smacking himself on the head, because he knows he must sound like an idiot right about now. “Right, I ehm, I’m Morris.”

“A real pleasure” she almost sounds like she’s mocking him, but at the same time the comment doesn’t sound at all nasty. “Walk with me, Morris?”

“I… of course?”

She calmly loops an arm in his, and begins to lead them both on a walk through the market, and it’s really quite pleasant, once Merlin gets over just how strange this encounter is going so far. “Not from London, hm?” she asks with nonchalance, looking up at the sky like she’s admiring the grey clouds rolling in. It looks like rain.

He shakes his head. “No, but I’ve visited a few times, though.”

“And what do you do? For a trade, I mean?”

Merlin feels like this woman doesn’t exactly know what boundaries are, thinking of how she’s already completely forgotten their run-in with each other and has now proceeded to pry into his life without any precursor. He wonders what she’s playing at, but he answers all the same.

“I do a few things. I’ve been a healer in multiple towns, was a student at a couple institutions, and tried joining a guild once or twice. Nothing too interesting.” He cocks his head to the side like it doesn’t really matter what it is he does. The last part’s a lie, of course, he’s done a multitude of interesting things. For instance, lived as part of the royal court for more than a few monarchs, lived in various countries and studied in all of them, earned the odd doctorate or two in medicine, anatomy, and the like, and he knows more people than he would care to admit. Important people. Well-known people. But he tells Anne none of this. He asks a question of his own instead.

“It doesn't sound _un_ interesting in the slightest. Multiple institutions? So I've run into quite the well-educated man, it seems" she plows her way through a small mob gathered around a food stall, just about dragging Merlin along by the elbow while she muses, unaffected by their surroundings.

Merlin decides he would rather the conversation remain focused on anything but himself, chancing his own question, "And what is it _you_ do?” he asks.

Anne hums at this, pondering for a moment. “Well,” she begins, after a minute of roaming the cobblestones and slipping in between the food stalls. Merlin gladly inhales the aroma of cooked meat and ground spices. “Well, I suppose I’m also a body of many trades. Never went to school, ‘though I did study literature and a bit of Latin in the home. I’ve been married for some time, you see, and my husband is very busy, so I keep myself occupied. Well, I _used_ to study more, but my child has kept me rather occupied as well, ever since my marriage to Will.”

“Your husband?”

“Mhmm, a fine playwright, him.”

Merlin’s eyebrows lift, and he turns his head to look at her fully. “You husband writes plays?”

Anne’s eyes light up at the question, like she’s been aching to get to this part of the conversation for some time, and spares none in sharing everything she can about her husband, the playwright. He writes wonderful works, and many have been performed already, so she tells Merlin proudly. “I helped to write a few” claims the enthused woman, throwing her shoulders back. “He comes to me for help with his first drafts, and I fix what I can. I like to think I’m well-read enough to be of some help to him, I’ve already edited a number of new plays. Nearly half of them, in fact! And Will is just never grateful,” she starts to complain, but it’s lighthearted, and Merlin listens intently, with no choice but to remain right next to her with their arms still looped together. “Always traveling with his thespian friends instead of thinking about _us_. Well, he _is_ thirty, anyway. He’ll come into his right mind soon enough.” She sighs.

Looking back, Merlin doubts that her dear “Will” ever truly came into his right mind. But oh, how right she would be about his rise to fame.

******

“I think a trip to the Globe is just what you need, Morris. You’ll love it, I know you will!”

Niam has managed to convince Merlin to join him for an outing to the Globe theatre, to see a production of _Titus Andronicus_ before the troupe begins rehearsing something new.

Adam McAnthony, a muscular man of thirty-five with a scar across his nose and intense, grey eyes elbows Niam on their way up to the entrance of the theatre, an hour early for the show in order to get ready.

“Hullo!” he murmurs into Niam’s ear, loud enough for both Leo and Merlin to hear as well. “There goes Burbage, you reckon he’s ready for the last performance?”

Niam and Leo both nod deliberately, but Merlin doesn’t react with anything other than confusion. He doesn’t know the Burbage they’re referring to, but he doesn’t sound like a very nice bloke, judging by the way the other three men speak of him. “I reckon Richard’s getting a bit too big for his britches, eh Leo?” Adam chuckles, and they all watch a man of average height but sporting an impressive beard walk – no, _stroll_ – through the theatre entrance.

Niam takes pity on Merlin and explains patiently while they walk, “Richard Burbage is a favorite of Will’s, he tends to get the leading roles in most of the plays he auditions for. He’s only a minor role in the one we’ll be seeing today, but that’s a rarity for him.”

The other two “ _hmph_ ” in agreement, and let Niam lead the way through the Globe’s entrance.

Once inside, Merlin is immediately welcomed by the smell of sweat, fresh paint, and wood. The theatre is dark and nearly empty, seeing as they’re early, but he’s impressed nonetheless. Niam catches the look on Merlin’s face.

“I can tell that you’ll like it already” he grins slyly, and ushers Merlin over to a seat while Adam and Leo both make their way towards the front of the theatre to get backstage.

******

It’s a fantastic performance, Merlin is thoroughly impressed.

Niam has been absent from his seat next to Merlin’s since the second half of the show began, they required an extra stage hand and Niam was never one to refuse a request for help.

He sits there silently, intently focused on the fight happening before him. One actor argues passionately with the other, grilling the other man for a confession to what he has done. The fighting continues until the other actor utters the line, “Villain, I have done thy mother!” which earns uproarious laughter from the audience, as well as a few whistles. It’s not so different from most audiences he’s encountered before. Just then, someone sits down beside him in Niam’s abandoned seat.

“Anne!”

The woman from the incident at market earlier today is smiling serenely, her dress prim and classy in pale yellows. She’s all dressed up for a day at the theatre.

“I thought I’d see you here” she whispers, “You struck me as a theatre sort of person when I met you.”

“Funny, I’ve heard something like that before” Merlin answers. Soon the both of them are wrapped up as the play progresses into further tragedy.

“So, who is your favorite character?”

Merlin thinks on that for a moment, then says, “Tamora. She’s smart, definitely more clever than that husband of hers. I’m really enjoying them all, though.”

Anne appears amused by his answer. They continue to watch in silence.

******

The show comes to an end, and the audience is cheering and applauding vigorously from their seats, or from the floor right in front of the stage.

Anne and Merlin both turn their heads when Niam comes gallivanting out, and the man gives a pleasant wave to the both of them. “Hullo Anne! Fancy seeing you here.” He has a knowing look on his face, and Merlin looks from one to the other. Anne gives a curt nod, then turns to leave her seat and heads towards the front of the theatre to greet others, no doubt she must know a few more people in the cast.

“You know each other?” Merlin asks once Anne is out of earshot.

“Who, Anne?” Niam laughs. “Sure! She’s quite the lady, hey? The woman’s got a quick wit about her. She and her husband have always worked very well together.”

“So you know her husband?”

Niam looks stunned. “You mean to tell me… you’ve met Anne, but not her husband? Usually it’s the other way around.”

Merlin frowns, not sure why he _should_ know this elusive husband that Anne has bragged about to him for a solid three hours only today. “She told me he was a playwright, but I was never introduced.”

With a quirk of his lips, the taller man puts a hand on Merlin’s shoulder and steers him towards the stage. Now that the crowd has begun to thin, it’s much easier to make it through the theatre without being trampled. “Then let me introduce you!”

******

The backstage area smells more heavily of sweat than the rest of the theatre but Merlin ignores it, when he is finally introduced to the talk of the town - sir playwright himself, the famous William of Stratford-upon-Avon. Or Will, as he more commonly goes by, apparently. A stout man, younger than Anne, but already balding on top. He possesses a certain charisma that would make Merlin believe anything he has to say, even if it was borderline insane. He can tell why the man is so good at what he does; he has a certain flare about him that can only come from those who have made theatre their way of life.

Anne is already backstage, and at Merlin’s mention of his and Anne’s recent conversation about Will, she pats her husband’s arm fondly and smiles. Merlin realizes that this must be the famous Will that she was talking about at their first meeting. As well as the famous Will that _Niam_ has been talking about. It seems these two Wills are one and the same, and he mentally kicks himself for not putting it together sooner.

“One day, you will come back here and see another one of these productions, ey Morris?” Niam chuckles, once all of the introductions and goodbyes are said and done with.

Breathing in the fresh air while he and Niam finally leave the theatre, Merlin feels content. “It’s a promise” he replies.

As they continue on, Niam suggests enthusiastically that Merlin should join him and his thespian friends, maybe consider the theatre business, because he “appears to have all the makings of an excellent actor.” Merlin politely declines, but says he might try it some other day. Maybe.

Compared to his first day with Niam and his crew in London, the rest of the days pass him by in a haze.

It’s nice to be able to think, without having to worry so much. Sometimes, a day at the theatre is just what the doctor ordered.

He doesn’t run into Anne again, but he thinks about her and her husband all the same, and how they certainly do make an excellent pair, despite the age difference and Will’s wacky personality.

Niam and his friends have been incredibly gracious, inviting him into their home and treating him to a show by one of London’s greatest playwrights. Their nights by the fire sharing stories about their finest theatrical successes have Merlin grinning from ear to ear, the grin never fading even as one of the men asks him to pass the stew, or when they discuss their plans for upcoming auditions.

They all appear to be especially hardworking, and Merlin finds himself comforted by being around people who honestly don’t care about his background, but instead only think of how to make others happy. That’s what theatre is all about, they insist: entertaining people. Making others happy. Niam is especially fond of doing this. Selfless and charismatic, Niam is someone Merlin has no trouble getting along with, above all the others in their little troupe. They spend hours walking the street and sitting by the Thames, just talking and laughing, about anything. About theatre. About people, interesting or boring, and about their plans. Niam wants to play the lead role in one of Will’s upcoming productions, which has yet to be finished, the rough draft is just barely to the halfway point, so he’s been informed.

“Will’s already told me I would be an excellent match for the part, I do hope you will come back and see it” he murmurs, thinking on the prospect of getting such a part, and in a production written by someone of such prominence. “Let me know when you’re in the city again, will you? I can get you into the theatre free of charge, you have my word.”

Again, Merlin finds himself in awe of how generous Niam can be to a near-stranger. Well, maybe not such a stranger now. He’d called Merlin a friend. Still, he’s extremely considerate, even for a friend. Merlin wishes his visit could be extended, but he’d said a week, and staying any longer than that would be imposing. He wouldn’t take advantage of Niam and his friends’ hospitality like that.

Still, he’s sad to leave when the week finally does come to a close.

******

The quiet of the night is broken with a shout.

Leopold and Adam both stand in the doorway of the kitchen, alarmed.

Niam is sitting up on the sleeping mat, shaking from head to foot. He stares at the wall, unresponsive until one of the men hisses, “Oi! Niam! Wake up, mate. You all right?”

“Niam! What happened?” Leo demands, entering the little room with his arms crossed, his voice hoarse from sleep. There are deep circles under his eyes, and the same can be said for Adam. It’s the wee hours of the morning, the sun hasn’t even risen yet. But the shout from the room over had woken them both. Adam is not a friendly man when he’s tired, but the look on Niam’s face keeps him from turning harsh.

“You were shouting” Leo explains carefully. Adam wrings his hands behind his back, wishing for his bed but knowing that something isn’t right.

Niam stares, then brings a hand to his face, trying to mask the fact that he’s on the verge of tears.

“I… I was… _dying_.”

Leo and Adam shoot each other a glance, before Adam nods to the other man in the doorway, soundlessly communicating that’s he going back to bed. He’s too tired to deal with this right now.

With Adam gone, Leo gives the man on the mat a stern look, and shakes his head.

“It was a dream, Niam, go back to sleep.” He gives an enormous yawn, not bothering to cover it up with a hand. “Look, I’m sorry whatever it was troubled you but it wasn’t real…” No answer. Also exhausted, Leo gives up. “Good night then” he finishes lamely, and with that, he turns to leave.

Niam watches Leo exit the room in a tired huff. Nervous, he lays his head back against his pillow, but his entire body is tense. He won’t be falling back asleep any time soon.

“It was a dream” he murmurs, to no one but himself. He’s not so sure the words are true.

No one checks Niam's room to see if Merlin has woken up.

******

 The streets of London are quiet, and the air chills Merlin through his thin jacket, but he grows accustomed to the brisk morning air quickly enough.

Before he left, he’d made sure to leave a parting gift, just a little something in way of thanks. A few coins on the kitchen table, a loaf of fresh bread on the shelf, new wood in the fireplace, and the sparse furniture dusted clean, all thanks to a bit of tender loving care – and a bit of easy magic.

There aren’t many people out on the streets at this time of day. Technically, since it’s still dark out, it could be considered night time. The air is misted over in a light fog, and the people who actually _do_ wake at this hour to begin their work mill about the cobblestones, weary and seemingly aimless, like ghosts.


	4. Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theatre is never fair. Also, Merlin doesn't handle certain sorts of tension terribly well.

The production of _Othello_ circa 1604 went wonderfully, and was very well-received.

The leading role was, of course, given to Richard Burbage.

Niam shook the man’s hand anyway, and he’d done so with a gracious smile.

“I do hope you will come and see one of our productions down at the Merrymakers theatre, tomorrow is closing night” Niam had informed Richard, and the other man could answer in nothing less than high spirits.

“I would be honored to attend.”

“Excellent, I look forward to it!” He’d clapped Richard happily on the back in a brief moment of comradery, all smiles and white teeth, his curly brown hair tied back, frizzing and creating a splendid halo effect. Despite not being able to perform in _Othello_ after Will went back on his word, Niam was never one to hold a grudge.

Then he’d held out his hand to shake Richard’s. The actor had raised a bushy eyebrow skeptically, but after a second’s pause he’d taken Niam’s hand and shaken it, firm and sincere.

“That was some show you put on tonight, mate.” Niam sounded happy for Richard, no trace of spite or sarcasm anywhere.

“My good man, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

******

**1643**

Arthur _would_ come back. He would.

But these false alarms really need to stop, because he feels as though the universe is out to get him, quite honestly. That doesn't stop him from doing a double take when he enters the classroom, nearly dropping his stack of textbooks in the process. Some of the students snicker. The rest of them - the smarter ones - keep their mouths shut and wait for him to begin the lecture.

Merlin has trouble getting through the next two hours without glancing every ten minutes or so in the general direction of one student, sitting one row from the front. 

He has the same problem for the next three months, too. He can't stop himself from looking, but at the same time, it hurts every time he turns to face what might just be Arthur Pendragon's newest form. The most familair-looking he's ever confronted.

******

Merlin has _never_  met anyone who looks so remarkably similar to Arthur, never in his life, right down to the sweep of golden hair, to the ridge of the Roman nose, to the way he lounges on the school benches like he owns the damn place as he laughs with his friends, right down to the way his lips purse when he’s about to say something after being deep in thought.

Like…

“You were looking at me funny in class. Have I done something wrong, professor?”

Just the opposite, really, and Merlin wishes this wasn’t happening just now, doing his best to remain impassive while this - admittedly nice looking - human being approaches him after class and gives him a look that says he’s not here to ask about the lesson at all.

The student is twenty, not much younger than Merlin is (or at least, not much younger than he claims to be). Merlin found out as much after the first day of class, when the young man sauntered up to the front of the classroom, once the other students had filtered out for the day. Then, he’d introduced himself as Aron Williamson, and Merlin still hasn’t gotten over the shock of seeing Arthur Pendragon’s doppelganger in the flesh. A younger version, perhaps, but impossibly similar in nearly every regard. Except for the green eyes.

“I did?” is all he can think to ask, and Merlin wishes he wouldn’t get so flustered over one student. _He's just a student. It's not really him, goddammit, pull yourself together. You're pushing nine hundred years old, what is wrong with you?_

He’s had many students during his past ten years at Cambridge, he shouldn’t think any differently of this one.

“You were smiling. When you thought I wasn’t looking. But I saw you, you _were_ smiling. You did the same thing last week, when you were talking about cranial anatomy." Oh, sure, so now he actually remembers what they were discussing in class a week ago. "Your eyes went sort of distant and then you glanced at me. And you smiled, I know you did." He sounds smug, and when Merlin finally looks him in the eye, he sees that Aron looks it, too. Just because he'd noticed his professor when Merlin thought no one ever paid attention. "Not a big smile, but definitely a smile. It's nice to see you smile. Sometimes though, you just look a sight lost. I'll bet you used to smile more, yeah?” Aron is grinning like he’s won the argument before it’s even begun.

Merlin feigns ignorance, but indulges the student just a little when he admits, “Well, you reminded me of someone. I apologize if the action disturbed you. Anything else? Or would you kindly allow me to sort through these books in peace? I was going to arrange them by alphabet and color, you see” he wishes he wasn't so on edge every time Aron caught him off guard like this. He continues to find himself floundering, hiding behind sarcasm and assinine jokes that probably go right over the student's blond head.

“Who do I remind you of?” _No, that's really not your business to ask,_ Merlin thinks.

And he says so, too.

“I don’t see how that’s your business, Mister Williamson.”

“It’s Aron.” Merlin raises his eyebrows at the impish retort. “And the other professors tell stories about you. A mystery of a man, I’ve heard.” The edge in his student’s voice is daring, promising to lead up with more questions. It’s almost  _flirtatious._ "I've always liked a good mystery." 

 _Jesus_. Some nerve he’s got.

“That so?” Merlin works especially hard not to meet the student’s eye, for fear he might lose his train of thought. He looks _so_ _much_ like Arthur...

“They say you look exactly the same as you did the day you arrived here.” Aron doesn’t appear to doubt this, either, the way he looks Merlin up and down with the faintest trace of a smirk. “A silly thing to bring up but, I was intrigued.”

“Ah..”

To be honest, Merlin _has_ heard the whisperings floating around the university, what they say about him. How he’s strange, and how it’s not right for a young man like him to keep so much to himself. How the older professors wish they could have been just as springy and youthful when they were his age. 

Younger professors, who had been here just as long as Merlin but  _looked_ it spoke of how Merlin, either because of a deal with the devil or God Himself, maybe both, simply did not age. Rumours like these had begun about three years ago, and hadn't stopped since. Merlin continues to be resolute in his age.

His age, which is becoming less and less believable by the year. Starting here under the pretense of being just twenty-one, and now apparently pushing thirty with nothing to show for it by way of age lines or loss of vitality, he’ll have to get out of here soon. That, or he’ll have to cast a permanent aging spell, and _that_ would be much more trouble than it was worth. But it was that, or people would begin to catch on.

People who knew more than they ought.

 _Knew more than they ought,_  meaning, _people-who-knew-about-magic-and-could-very-well-out-Merlin-for-what-he-really-is_

People far and wide were acquainted with the name _Merlin_  just as readily as they knew the name _King Arthur_ and the legends associated with them both. Butchered as they had become in the past few centuries, the legends were steadfast in their roots. Anyone off the street could tell you the bare bones of who Merlin was, and how he lived in Camelot under the reign of king Arthur Pendragon and his noble knights.

Merlin has to force himself not to roll his eyes so far back that they're stuck to the inside of his skull, every time he has to listen to someone regale their version of what  _really_ happened in Camelot, and how Merlin was an evil wizard, or an old hermit, or this, or that, _blah blah blah..._

He had been planning his resignation for some time now, because, like every other time, he knows he can't stay when people's tongues start wagging about him.

But now he wants to stay a little while longer, if only to keep an eye on this… familiar face.

“A few friends of mine told me that you should definitely be thirty, if not older.” Aron cuts in on Merlin's inner musings, green eyes sweeping over the professor’s lean frame, mostly covered in the pooling black robes and silk accents. “But you don’t look it.” Clearly, he’s glad of this too. “Would you agree with that?”

Merlin can only shrug, and his professor’s robes sweep against the floor for a moment. The hood attached to the back of the formal wear weighs down a bit, the black and scarlet cloth lined with cherry silk shiny as ever. He’s had his doctorate of medical science for at least a decade – _this_ doctorate, at least, but he’s earned others at different universities before Cambridge.

He says nothing of this, though, only listens keenly when Aron tells him, “I just keep hearing how you’re a curious man, if you don’t mind my saying, professor Emory.” The student hasn’t the least bit of shame anywhere on his face. “If it’s not much trouble, I wanted to ask one more thing.”

“I’m twenty-seven, if that answers your question” Merlin snaps, but he doesn’t mean for it to come out quite like that. Not to mention, Aron would catch on to the lie immediately. He's supposed to be a good four years older than twenty-seven, but Aron doesn't seem to notice. Or care. Actually, all he really does is stare at his professor like he's seeing him in a new light.

Merlin presses his lips into a thin line, doing his best not to scowl. Pretty and insolent as the student is, this little display of curiosity about his personal life is not welcome at all. “Was that all you wanted to talk to me about, Mister Williamson? Because if it is, you are free to leave.”

“No.” Not to be fazed by his professor’s _blatant_  dismissal, Aron remains rooted in place, his feet stubbornly glued to the shining, hardwood classroom floor.

“Well then?” He’s doing his best to be the figure of authority in this situation, but Merlin realizes that his willpower is rapidly dwindling with every second that passes, as he stares more and more at this doppelganger, this unsuspecting reminder of his past.

“I wanted to ask if you would join me on a walk. Tomorrow, after lessons if it's not too much trouble. I have some questions concerning the topic we’re studying, but I’d prefer to wait until tomorrow." He plucks at the end of his shirt sleeve, at ease. "Busy night tonight, my father is leaving on business and he wants me home early.”

Merlin can’t understand why he should consider taking a walk with a student, on informal terms, just to discuss a lesson. “Why not the classroom?” he asks, with some suspicion.

“A walk sounds more appealing, I think.” The corners of Aron’s lips turn up, and his green eyes glint. “I hate staying in these stuffy classrooms for too long. Fresh air helps me to concentrate.” Of course he does, Merlin thinks, wondering if he would act like Aron if he ever had a nobleman for a father. 

Merlin accepts the answer and nods, clasping his hands behind his back and raising his chin. “All right, tomorrow after class then.”

“Great, I look forward to it.” And indeed, the young man looks considerably happier now that his professor has confirmed his yes. “Until tomorrow then, professor Emory.” He gives a shameless wave of his hand, before he turns around with his bag over his shoulder and strolls out of the classroom, all airs. Rich prat, definitely. But then, so are all the other students. No one less than the offspring of an upper class snob can afford university. Even if it _is_ the mid-seventeenth century. Merlin hopes that will change with time. However, just at the moment his thoughts are much too preoccupied with noticing Aron Williamson’s shoulders, and how they look even broader from the back.

******

“I’ll admit, it’s strange to see you wearing something other than your professor’s robes. How old is that scarf, anyway?” He grins cheekily at his professor’s attire without giving a thought to how inappropriate the comment is, considering who is _supposed_ to be the figure of authority here. But the weather is warm, and no one wears a scarf in June, unless they’re mad. Or Merlin.

“Nevermind, where did you plan on us discussing the lesson?” Merlin and Aron Williamson, or rather, Arthur Pendragon’s doppelganger, walk side by side, making their way down a path following the river Cam. “I don’t see why you’d have any decent reason to reject the classroom, I have access to all the teaching rooms and laboratories in the basement.”

Aron snorts and pushes up the sleeves of his light blue tunic. He's gone without a coat today, because at least he's sane enough to not want to die of heatstroke. His hair is the perfect shade of bronze when the late spring sun hits it just so. Then Merlin tells himself to stop thinking about that, especially when Aron answers, “I told you, I preferred to study under my terms.”

“And I only _agreed_ to your terms of study because your father is a baron. You knew I didn’t have much of a choice.”

Unbothered, Aron rebuts with his own, carefully thought out argument. “Sure, all right. Whatever you say.” And that’s the end of that conversation.

Aron’s continued impudence has begun to get under Merlin’s skin, but it’s not entirely a bad thing. The younger man certainly shares some of Arthur’s personality, in addition to his looks. “And trust me, the manor has an excellent stock of books on the course material. I think you’ll like it, it’s a great collection.” This is the first time he doesn’t completely sound as if he’s trying to aggravate his professor’s moodiness, and Merlin, thinking over Aron’s claim, now decides that this might be worth the walk.

******

As it turns out, the baron William Jamesson has quite a spectacular assortment of laboratory equipment, as well as a fine array of medical textbooks to browse.

The baron is a man who values education, and Merlin, at the very least, can appreciate that. But upon further inspection, he can already see that much of the books and equipment haven’t been put to use in a very long time, if the thick layer of dust coating the shelves is anything to go by.

“My father is away on business, but we’re welcome to use what we need..." He lets Merlin stroll about the shelves for a few minutes to take it all in. The soles of his shoes click lightly over marble flooring. Honestly, who other than a baron would have _marbled flooring?_

"I have a few questions about last lesson, actually, and I’d like to go over the books.”

With a nod, Merlin follows the younger man past a couple shelves stocked with texts and scrolls on matters of the church and theological practices, making their way over the section on science and medicine. Even with the minimal lighting sneaking in between the curtained windows of the lower floor, the titles on the spines of the text are easy to make out. Merlin squints and picks out a particularly thick volume from the next shelf and cracks it open. The pages are brittle, and he does his best not to ruin any of the delicate parchment. His fingers flip nimbly through the first chapter, and then he comes across what he’s searching for:

**_F_ _unctiones_ _C_ _orporis_ _H_ _umani - An Introduction to the Physiology and Anatomy of the Human Body_ **

He thinks about Aron’s performance in the past couple of lessons, and can see why he should be worried about doing well in the class. He pays no attention to what’s on the board, only chats with his friends on their bench, or stares at Merlin without writing a single thing down. Saints help the man, he certainly isn’t going to pass without tutoring. Which, after much debating the matter in his head, Merlin has agreed to give, if only because he would like to stay on the good side of Baron Jamesson. And because he would give an arm and a leg to be spending more time with this particular student than any other.

“We’ll start at the beginning” he says, after clearing his throat. He wishes the room wasn’t so dusty. Sensing this, Aron cuts in before the other man can say another word.

“We can go upstairs, there’s a study attached to my chambers that’s always kept clean. If you’d like that better, I mean.” He quickly tacks on the last sentence, and for a split second he looks a bit unsure of himself, like he hopes he hasn’t just made his guest uncomfortable because he’d noticed the way the professor looked like he was about to sneeze twice already.

Merlin doesn’t see why not. With a decided nod, he says, “Lead the way,” motions with an arm for Aron to head up the staircase at the far end of the room, and tucks the sturdy textbook under his arm. He’s brought a bag of his own books as well, but he hopes he won’t need them all. He makes a shaky assumption that surely, Aron hasn’t been _completely_ slacking off in his classes.

******

The upstairs room is, like Aron had said, very clean. It’s also very spacious, and Merlin makes a mental note that at least the floor up here is not also marble. A house with flooring entirely of marble would be a bit much.

An oriental rug, most likely worth more than anything Merlin has earned in the past century put together, a sofa, a foot rest, one small table with a polished globe, and a desk, without a book, quill pen or paper in sight. The long curtains are drawn shut entirely. The study has been unused for some time.

It dawns on Merlin that this is a family that is more invested in appearance than they are in the actual use of things like books or desks. That will have to change. Especially if Aron wants to get anywhere in his academic pursuits.

“So,” Merlin hazards, “You’ll want to be discussing the regions and cavities of the body, I take it? Were you having trouble understanding the material today in class? Or do you want to return to some earlier material?”

"Earlier material, probably." Merlin translated that to mean, "I don't know shite, please just tell me everything."

“Okay, and did you take notes during yesterday’s lesson?”

Aron shifts around a bit. “I… yes,” he answers with a nervous edge.

“Would you please show me?”

Hesitating, Aron turns to look back at his school bag, which he’d set down next to the desk when they’d first entered the study. “I’m not sure if I put them in the right bag” he mutters. Merlin is not convinced in the slightest. But he knows it’s pointless to point out the fact that Aron is clearly lying. Meanwhile, Aron only continues to stand there, staring at nothing but Merlin.  Merlin can’t help but be somewhat perplexed.

“Something else wrong?” he asks, and takes great care not to come off as upset. The man’s bottom lip disappears for a second when he bites down on it, probably a bit on edge, now that his professor pretty much knows that he’s been slacking on notes. But it’s hardly news to Merlin.

What _is_ news to Merlin is when he finds out he rather _likes_ this other side to the typically arrogant, prattish schoolboy in anatomy class; he _likes_ it when Aron gets nervous. It’s the sort of nervous that isn’t immediately noticeable, but he’s known someone other than Aron to act in much the same way when caught in a stressful situation. The biting of the lip, the freezing in place, the tap of the fingers against his thighs, the way his eyes keep looking to Merlin’s face, and then away to the rug, and then back again. Merlin enjoys knowing that the student has not completely forgotten who the authority is here.

“Nothing. Nothing wrong at all,” the young man murmurs, taking the smallest step closer to his professor. “But since I clearly don’t have my notes, would you mind telling me about those things now? The regions and cavities, I mean.”

Merlin quirks an eyebrow, and takes a step of his own. Then another, until he’s crossed the study to the desk, where he lays down his bag and the extra textbook. Then he turns to face Aron again, who is now closer than before.

“We can start,” he says, “with the ventral cavity." He pulls out one of the textbooks and ushers Aron over to a chair.

Obligingly, Aron steps forward. When Merlin takes a seat in one of the plush study chairs by the desk, Aron sits, too.

"The cavity is subdivided into two other cavities," says Merlin, pointing at a diagram on the page he's flipped to. "The abdomino-pelvic and thoracic. The last one can actually be split up into just the abdominal cavity and the pelvic cavity. Do you remember where they’re located?”

Aron shakes his head, but he eyes Merlin carefully, waiting. Merlin sighs. “Right, well, these terms are necessary if you want to understand any further information in the class, so I suggest you pay attention. It’s not difficult.” He lets the thick textbook in his hands fall to the polished surface with a _thunk,_ giving Aron a good startle. Smirking to himself, Merlin brings a hand up, holding it to his own chest. “Right here” he begins, “is where the thoracic cavity is located. It contains the heart and the lungs. Very important in the transfer of blood through the body. They're part of the circulatory and respiratory system, respectively.”

“Hmm” Aron purses his lips, thoughtful like before. “Nice.”

He scoots forward in his seat, and Merlin notices that this seating arrangement is a bit too close for comfort, and not a viable amount of space for teaching. But he coughs to clear his throat, and continues his explanation.

His brain feels like it's not working quite right. With his focus not entirely together, it seems to be running subconsciously. Definitely not consciously.

“Next is the abdominal cavity,” Merlin lowers his hand to his stomach as he holds up the book for Aron to inspect, but Aron’s gaze follows Merlin's hand instead. “The abdominal cavity contains the digestive organs, other viscera, and the like. Also extremely important for your overall health, but not as well-protected by the rib cage. And next…” He swallows.

Maybe he should have thought this teaching method through, he thinks, as he hesitates to bring his hand to the next region. He hopes the textbook will be of some use - a distraction, perhaps - but now that he's looking at Aron he can see that the young man has his attention otherwise preoccupied.

“The pelvic cavity,” Merlin says quietly, and Aron leans forward, so close to Merlin that they now both accept the fact that there’s something much more going on here than just an innocent study session. “Located…” he’s basically whispering at this point.

And Aron, instead of waiting for his professor to finish his sentence, gives Merlin a pointed look, almost too cheeky for Merlin to think that Aron has actually been focusing on the lesson this entire time. 

“Pelvic cavity, also very important. You’re right,” Aron mutters, long eyelashes fluttering when he stares up into Merlin’s face, which is flushed and a little bit dumbstruck (honestly, the _audacity)_ \- but, decidedly, not angry. “This isn’t difficult at all. I appreciate you helping me, professor...”

Their breathing intermingles, irregular and terrifying. But not bad. Just the opposite, really.

All Merlin can think it,  _he looks just like Arthur._

And he pulls away.

Aron looks cresfallen. Merlin shakes his head, but he wants to explain. "Aron..."

"It's fine. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, it's - I was thinking about someone else and... Aron, I'm your professor."

"You say that like it means anything."

Merlin swallows. 

What does he have to lose?

And then, suddenly everything is happening fast, too fast, and not fast enough. It's all wrong and the details are faint in Merlin's head, but he remembers that they just barely make it to the bed in the adjacent room.

 

******

Not a second passed that night when he hadn’t wished Aron was someone else.

It's been ages, he thinks, since he's been with anyone at all. And this time, just like all the others, it was not exactly intentional.

But this time,  _unlike_ all the others (or most of them, anyway), there wasn't alcohol or sleep deprivation or dark magic to cloud his judgment. He was _completely_ in his right mind, able to think straight- well, perhaps that's a lie. Whenever he looks at Aron, in the classroom, in the university corridors, anywhere really, he can never seem to think straight. And now he's messed everything up, hasn't he? This can't continue.

Sunlight filters in through the tall windows of the baron's manor, but Merlin wishes it was still dark outside. All he can see when he looks at Aron, still half-asleep, is Arthur, goddamn _Arthur,_  golden hair a mess, face somehow softer, the light from the window casting a halo around him like sleeping deity.

It’s when he shifts his weight to swing his legs over the edge of the bed that Aron’s eyes flicker open.

“G'morning..” the young man slurs, groggy from sleep. His morning voice is much too distinct to _not_ jar Merlin’s memories. He remembers hearing that same voice a thousand and one times before, ordering him irritably to go make breakfast, or polish armor, or to close the bloody curtains. His chest aches.

He doesn't understand how two different people -from two different centuries, no less - can resemble each other so closely. So unnervingly. And Merlin's damn heart can't take it.

“I’m sorry... I’m so sorry” Merlin whispers, shutting his eyes for a moment. He’s thinking back on everything that transpired in the last twelve hours. None of it is good.

“I don’t understand,” Aron mumbles, but keeps his head soundly against his pillow. He hasn’t completely woken up yet. “What for?”

Silence.

Merlin can do nothing but pull his shoulders forward, until he’s hunched where he sits on the side of Aron’s bed, bare but for the sheet still tangled around his torso. Delicately, he does his best to ease the fabric away so that he can stand up properly.

Then he can’t take the silence anymore.

“I used you,” he confesses, allowing his head to hang, losing the will to face the other man because he knows deep down how very wrong this all is.

“Professor Emory-“

“Merton. Please, don’t call me professor here. It just sounds… I don't know. Wrong.” Completely out of place, more like. Considering what they’d been doing just hours before, one would _think_ they'd be on a first-name basis by now.

“….Merton. All right.” Aron blinks the sleep from his eyes and shifts a bit, raising a hand to touch the other man at the small of his back.

Merlin tenses up for a second, but he doesn’t move away. At least, not immediately.

“What on _earth_ do you mean?” Aron doesn’t sound quite as hurt as he does confused by Merlin’s confession. His thoughts are finally catching up with his sleep-addled body.

“This was a poor idea, a stupid idea, _especially_ on my account. This was my fault.” Merlin finally tugs the end of the sheet from himself and stands up in a hurry, then begins to pace the floor. He can’t seem to find his trousers anywhere in sight. Damn it all. He's just glad that June mornings are warm. “Considering I _am_ your professor of the sciences first and foremost-“

“Well, I can’t argue that you know your anatomy,” Aron comments from the bed. “Very, _very_ well.”

His – admittedly typical - decision to make indecent comments does nothing to help the matter at hand. Merlin scowls, but doesn't quit his fruitless search for trousers.

“Your doctorate was obviously well-earned.” The smirk on his lips is devilish and knowing, and terribly unwanted. Aron also does _not_ refrain from taking in an eyeful when Merlin turns his back to him, still searching for any article of his discarded clothing.

Gods above, this is the _last_ thing Merlin wants to listen to right now. He brings his hands up and rubs under his eyes, tugs at the dark hair hanging in his face, and he becomes closed off once more. _Where in hell are his damned trousers?_

“I should have stopped this all before it went too far but I…” He stops. Then something flickers across his expression. “Remember when I told you the reason I smile when I’m talking to you?” Merlin murmurs, making a point to stare at the ground, at his feet, at the frayed scarf lying dejectedly on the floor at the foot of the bed; anywhere but Aron’s ruined expression.

“You said it was because I remind you of someone…” His eyes suddenly go very wide. Aron is now very awake.

“I took advantage of what we had… and I used you," says Merlin. "Gods, I _did,_ didn't I?” he repeats, sounding more like he’s trying to convince himself of the words than anything, “Because… all because you remind me of someone else. Far too much.” The pacing ceases. “And I’m so, so sorry.”

Aron’s mouth falls open a few centimeters, understanding but still not believing. “You mean to tell me… that I was just a face to you, and that was all,” he deadpans, quiet and trying hard to remain impassive. “You... and you didn't... and then..” Merlin winces when he hears the quiver in Aron’s voice, the rustle of sheets when the younger man twists his hands into the material, “all because I _remind_ you of someone? That’s it?” He waits, not even daring to breathe.

Merlin knows he’s crossed a line. He’d been crossing a line the moment he’d agreed to tutor Aron anywhere other than in the familiar comfort of a classroom. Has it really come to this? He has to take a few deep breaths and remind himself that not only was Aron more than old enough to be in any sort of relationship, but he had also been more than perfectly willing. Merlin, on the other hand... _why_ had he done it?

Actually, he'd just said why, hadn't he?

He holds up a hand, giving one last attempt at salvaging whatever might be left of this… relationship? Acquaintanceship? A romantic affair between a student and his young professor? Or was this a friends with benefits sort of deal? Oh, absolutely not that. He doesn’t know. He snatches up the scarf from the floor.

“I mean, it wasn’t _necessarily_ like that, Aron, I really do like you, truly! It’s just that…”

Aron shakes his head, “It’s my age, isn’t it? You think I’m too young, and that if my father finds out he’ll have your head. He won't find out, though," he assures quickly. "But I mean, I get it. It _looks_ bad.” He gives a solemn nod of his head. “A professor with his student – I mean, not that you’re _old_ or anything, twenty-seven isn’t old at all. _Young_ actually-”

“Well there is _that_ , I guess. I mean, yes, I certainly am far too old for you, but it's not like you seemed to have cared too much about that to begin with. No, that’s not it.”

It finally dawns on Aron, and his voice becomes strangely quiet when he says, without meeting Merlin’s gaze, “There’s someone else.” His shoulders slump, and he sighs heavily. “Isn’t there?” His next breath comes out lighter than the one before. Like this is just something that he can brush off and forget, that it’s something he’ll get over in an hour or so over breakfast and some idle chatter.

Merlin finally finds his trousers somehow wedged between the bed and the side table, and he grabs them before hastily shoving his feet through the pant legs. “Was,” he mutters.

“Was?” Confused by the past tense, Aron raises a skeptical eyebrow. “So he’s dead, then? Or- or she. Whoever they were, they're dead?” Aron really has no affinity for subtlety. For some reason, this is  _good_ news to him, but Merlin doesn’t catch onto the moment of relief, thankfully.

Merlin bites his lip, shaking his head just a tiny bit. “In a manner of speaking…” He lets the sentence trail off into nothing. There’s a rather pregnant pause, where Merlin simply stands there at the foot of the bed with his trousers still unlaced around narrow hips, and his tunic – which he finally managed to find, how had it gotten halfway across the room? - draped over his shoulder, wrinkled and dulled of color in the low light of early morning.

Aron sits up in the bed, suddenly aware of his own… well, rather _inconvenient_ state of undress, seeing as he would very much rather stand up and speak to the other man face to face, man to man. But Merlin shakes his head again, and in another moment he breaks the silence with a particularly heavy exhale. It’s so wrong, the way his bed-messed hair can look so sinfully enticing, when the matter at hand is anything but. Aron chooses instead to look away, just as Merlin whispers, so quietly that Aron thinks he may be imagining things. “This cannot be.”

He looks back to Merlin. Well, Merton to him. “What?” he hisses. He's too proud to not be angry, at least a little bit.

“Us, I mean. I can’t be dishonest to you like that, or to anyone. I crossed a line, you know I did.”

There’s no answer from Aron. Only that face. The confused, borderline destroyed face looking back at him.

Merlin can’t bear the quiet, and finally, he says, “S’pose I’ll be going then.”

Aron’s eyes grow wider, taken aback at this abrupt change in attitude. “You’re going back to the university then?”

A shake of his head, and Merlin murmurs, “I have no home in Cambridge. I’ll be resigning very soon. Probably.”

“But where will you _go_?” Aron asks, incredulous. He pushes himself up straighter, trying to catch Merlin’s eye so that he can _look_ at him.

“Dunno,” comes the reply, muttered half to himself and half to Aron. “Away from here. You won’t have to see me again. You’ll have a new professor. Hopefully one of the old, crotchety ones. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas,” he jokes. An attempt, anyway. It draws only the faintest smile from Aron, but no sound.

With a deep breath, Merlin grabs the tunic from his shoulder and pulls it on, finally bothering to lace up his trousers as he scans the floor for his belt.

“What, you think that’s what I want, then?” Aron gripes, crossing his arms with self-importance even though he’s covered in nothing but sheets, hair still rumpled from sleep, amongst other things. And the self-important glare makes him look painfully similar to someone else Merlin knows. Knew.

“It’s… I don’t know” he murmurs faintly, gathering the last of his things. “I can’t stay any longer, I can’t hurt you more, I never wanted to _hurt_ anyone, and now I’ve gone too _far,_ and I’m _sorry_. I don’t know what came over me, but it cannot happen again…” He catches himself just as he begins to ramble. “I told you, Aron, I really am sorry. This is me saying goodbye.”

“No.”

“Yes. And I can’t come back.”

“So you won’t be giving the lesson tomorrow?”

He couldn’t. It was too much already. He’d messed up.

“I don’t think so, Aron.” He spares the man one last fleeting glance, before turning around with the rest of his things in hand, ready to leave. Again.

“During just the three months or so that I’ve known you, I think it’s only fair that you know, I’d already fallen madly in love with you.” Aron's voice is very quiet now, still a little hoarse from just waking up. “From the very first day you walked into the classroom in your robes, stumbling with that ridiculous stack of books. I’ve been meaning to say that… I just didn’t know how.”

Merlin stops, and finally forces himself to look at Aron directly, gaze unwavering, as he stares back into a youthful face framed with messy blonde hair and a strong jaw, and green eyes… green. Not blue. It isn’t Arthur.

It never was.

He grabs his jacket on his way out of the manor and he doesn't look back.

******

But maybe he was wrong.

When Aron wakes again, it's by nightmares of war and death, and a boat, and a fire.

And Merlin leaving him forever. For some reason, that's what scares him the most.


	5. Mercy

Of all places, America.

The New World.

 _New_ World? Really?

He’s pretty sure this world is anything but new. One hundred percent certain, actually. The land has been here for centuries, _eons_ , he can feel the old, resilient energy of the earth in his bones, and people inhabited this land long before the Puritans decided to call it their own. No one can own that which is nature’s – but they certainly don’t seem to think so.

The voyage aboard the ship that brought him here- the _Halcyon_ \- was anything but enjoyable. Cramped quarters, more sick and dying people than he could care for, and even as the only physician on board he didn’t receive many perks for his services. Maybe an extra rind of bread with meals, if only to keep him going so that he could carry on cleaning up after the most recent bouts of seasickness.

It proved especially difficult when rationing out whatever medicines they had on hand to treat combinations of sour stomachs from spoiled food, and scurvy from lack of nutrients in the food that managed to remain in the seafarers’ stomachs.

He winces when he thinks about how they dealt with those who died on board. So he tries not to think about it. But perhaps those who died were the more fortunate; This country is miserable and the people are not exactly the best company to keep, especially for anyone like him, with his… abilities. Especially if they aren’t particularly good at hiding it. But he’s lucky. He’s had plenty of practice with that.

Still, maybe he should’ve chosen to live in some town other than that of Salem, Massachusetts.

The air is brisk and the town square is beginning to crowd. A stout man in a thick, woolen cloak and an ornery wide-brimmed hat stands on a solid wooden platform with a look of purpose.

He brings a gloved hand to rest over his heart, like what he’s about to do is surely much more of a burden to him than it is to the young woman behind him, who looks to the heavens with defiance in her heart and a noose around her neck. Her lips quiver, and she faces skyward, eyes steeled and determined, and also terribly sad.

 1692 feels like a year that’s only going to go downhill from here.

******

Merlin’s first experience with a Salem trial almost makes his voyage aboard the _Halcyon_ look like a pleasure cruise. It’s not just any trial, either. It’s a witch trial.

Dark hair, heart-shaped face, eyes of a child, and a smattering of freckles across a large nose.

Merlin’s heart stutters despite the tense circumstances when the accused is brought out to face the judge and stern-looking jury. She shares some of the features with the first girl he’d ever fallen in love with.

But this young woman is fiercer, he can tell, the moment she opens her mouth to answer the pastor when he asks if she knows the answer to the question, “Do you know why you’re here, Leah Griffon?”

It’s just as much of a challenge as it is an answer when she spits back, “Why don’t you tell _me_?”

Pastor McIntyre, the mustached man behind the podium of the tiny courthouse, chuckles merrily, as if he’s expected that very answer. “Ah, but something tells me you already know. What, am I wrong?” He inclines his head expectantly, but receives no rebuttal.

Then he rests a hand on the podium and tries again, this time in a firmer tone of voice. “Pray, tell, why have you been brought to face judgment today, Miss Griffon? Hm?” He looks like he’s enjoying himself far too much, and Merlin scowls at the inappropriate behavior- And from a _pastor_ , of all people.

“I’ll see you in hell” she spits. The pastor hardly bats an eye.

“If that is so, it still holds true that you will be the first to burn. _Witch_.” The last word is uttered like the foulest expletive, and those who’ve gathered to witness the trial – which appear to be the entirety of Salem – react in much the same way, with shocked gasps and panicked murmurs.

The pastor holds up a hand to silence the crowd. He smiles. “Today, you stand before me and the jury, under the accusations of witchcraft and malice, from no less than three witnesses. For these crimes, you will pay dearly. That is,” he adds, “unless you are able to somehow _prove_ your innocence before the eyes of our judge and our members of the jury who have gathered here today. Surely, we cannot make such haste to dispatch one who could easily be wrongly accused. For all we know, what the witnesses saw may have been something else entirely.”

But the ominous leer on his waxy face proves that he doesn’t believe this to be the case. Not at all.

Merlin, standing by one of the benches closest to the back of the courthouse, does his best not to snap the man’s neck on the spot with a single word and a flash of his eyes.

Two young women, probably older than the accused but milder looking, and an old man, shuffle in a line up to the front of the cramped courthouse.

“I first call the witness, Clara Henle, to share her story.” Pastor McIntyre gives a gracious nod towards the first woman, who bows her head humbly and takes a few steps until she’s just next to the podium.

“Well I…” she begins, looking down towards her feet instead of the rest of the room. The man behind the podium interrupts.

“A little louder, my dear” he instructs, and the woman nods, taking a deep breath.

“I was on my way to the baker’s, when I heard this… I don’t know how to explain it, but I think it was a voice, hissing at me to follow it, towards the woods. So frightened was I that I didn’t _dare_ disobey it. And I, I f-followed the voice, towards the edge of the woods, and th-then…” She shivers. The pastor pats her shoulder stiffly, possibly an attempt to comfort her, and she looks to the man gratefully.

“And then, what happened?” he gently guides her back on track, “Do not fear, Clara, no harm can come to you here.”

Clara nods again. “And then… And then I _saw_ it. The demon.” A collective intake of breath from the packed room follows. “It was the witch’s familiar, I’m sure of it. Dark, spiked fur, a long, sly tail, and eyes that stared into my soul-”

“You probably saw a _cat_.” If looks could kill, then Leah, the accused woman, would suddenly have much more evidence against her, as she gives Clara the sourest look known to man. The pastor glares daggers at the young defendant and hisses back.

“You may not interrupt the testimonies, Miss Griffon, or your charges will be _much_ more severe.”

“What, you’ll burn me with twice the firewood you normally use? Surely you can’t think of something better?” She snorts. “Severe indeed.” Leah Griffon certainly doesn’t have any instinct for self-preservation. Whatever her problem is, she really isn’t helping herself.

Eventually, a sniffling Clara is led back to her seat, and the second witness is called.

It’s the old man, bald and with a scruffy white beard clinging for dear life to his jawline. His coat and trousers are worn, and his shoes are muddied- but exceptionally nice otherwise. It’s only just rained, so of course there’s a bit of mud. And a belt of odd-looking gadgets hangs from his waist, while his shirt front is stained with what looks like boot polish. Merlin assumes that this must be the village cobbler. With encouragement from pastor McIntyre, the old man steps forward to give his testimony.

“Two nights ago, I was workin’ in my shop, like usual, an’ I take stock of everythin’ on them shelves, all the shoes, every pair.” He pauses to look up at the pastor, then at his rapt audience. “An’ then I turn in for the night I does, an’ the next mornin’ I wakes up, an’ I walks into my shop an’…” There’s a pregnant pause. Everyone, including the pastor, is holding their breath. “An’ I comes to find that the shoes, _all_ my precious shoes, are all _switched_ _around_.”

Everyone just looks confused at this. That is, until the man explains thoughtfully, “All the laces were undone, and the right feet were set on the left side, while the left feet were set on the right side. No explanation as to how they got that way, it just happened overnight. Witchcraft, I tell ya.”

Some of the villagers sitting on their benches nod, fully and unquestioningly accepting this testimony. “An’ the next day, I goes an’ I sees Leah, passing by my shop!” Here, he removes his hat and scratches his balding head, thinning eyebrows high. “She never passes my shop in the mornings, only evenings, an’ she tells me good mornin’, an’ I ain’t never been so befuddled in all my life. First the shoes, and then that?” He shakes his head.

The pastor mimics the old man, also shaking his head in disbelief and giving a look of the utmost false sympathy. “I’m not sure we need even bring the last witness up. What say you all?” His voice carries across the room. Granted, it’s not a very large room to begin with. “Have we heard enough?”

Being the reserved Puritans they are, there’s no shouting of ‘hear hear!’ or a chorus of ‘burn the witch!’ but rather a lengthy period of time – perhaps twenty or so long, aching seconds – before the townsfolk packed into the courthouse all appear to come to an agreement. The evidence is all too clear, at least to them.

“Hmm, yes, so I thought. I shall take your resigned silence as a ‘yes,’” drawls pastor McIntyre. “Now, in accordance with our la-”

“Give her a few more days to prove she is innocent,” a voice rises up from somewhere towards the back of the room. All heads turn around to get a good look at whoever’s had the gall to interrupt their beloved pastor.

Merlin glares defiantly back at pastor McIntyre from the standing-room-only spot in the back of the room, and his voice carries with its fiery volume when he continues in a now dead-silent courthouse, with all eyes trained on him.

“She should be given a fair trial,” he grinds out through his teeth. “Should the woman not also be given a reasonable time frame to collect any evidence that might prove her innocence?” he asks, waving a hand about, like he just wishes everyone could _see_ that all of this is just plain, misinformed insanity.

The young woman with the fiery temper, clearly shocked that someone is actually speaking up for her, stops struggling against the bindings around her wrists- which are meant to keep her from ‘trying anything.’ As if she would try any magic in front of this paranoid lot.

“Please, show a little mercy,” Merlin says, with eyes only for the accused, as well as her look of unmasked surprise. “That _is_ one of the virtues that you teach, is it not, pastor?”

The stunned silence to follow is something of a satisfaction to Merlin, who knows that the audacious man at the front of the room could not possibly deny such a request, not when it’s phrased in such a way. Not if he wanted to prove that he wasn’t a blasphemer and a fool, in front of his own town.

Scowling, but quickly replacing the look with a wan, patient smile, the pastor nods deeply towards the back of the room, to Merlin, who holds his breath. No matter what the man says anyway, Merlin will think up a second plan if need be. Just in case the woman’s sentence still holds when this is all over.

“I… of course. How right you are” the older man puts on an unconvincingly apologetic air, but Merlin is certain that no one but himself catches it as the horribly fake display that it is. “We will give this woman” he nods toward Leah Griffon, “Forty-eight hours to go about collecting any evidence to prove her innocence. No more, no less. Under my watchful eye, of course.”

Merlin is trying to control the urge to growl back at the pastor.

But suddenly, the older man flings his arm forward, back towards Merlin’s corner, and points a steady finger. “And _you_ – yes, you – will help her.” What, Merlin? “Stay right where you are after this is all over, I will speak with you then.” Then he brings his hand back down, briefly scans one of the papers on the podium in front of him while the crowd looks on, and then he pops his head back up.

“All right. That is all for now. You're all dismissed for the day.”

And just like that, everyone’s gone back to acting like everything is normal. There’s a collective rise in volume immediately after the pastor’s dismissal. The three witnesses are greeted by swarms of interested admirers on their way out; The woman accused, on the other hand, is led solemnly away by two men, and just before she gets to the door, she catches Merlin’s eye and holds it there.

Merlin stares back, forgetting for a minute where he is. The eyes are pleading, scared and angry and sad all at once. He can’t look away.

Then, she’s out the door, and he blinks back to reality.

Someone taps him on the shoulder. Merlin turns so that he’s face to face with pastor McIntyre.

“Come and visit me tonight,” he mutters, “We may talk then, mister… sorry, who are you?” He waves a hand to and fro, carefree, then has the decency to look just a bit sheepish while he adjusts his hat. “I’m not sure we’ve ever met. But to be fair, I fear I haven’t been doing my best at keeping track of faces and names in this blasted town. I thought I saw you pass me by in the market the other day, but of course I could be wrong-“

“Merton. It’s Merton.” Merlin looks at the gloved hand extended towards him but does not shake it. “Merton Gusterson.”

“A real pleasure.”

“I’m sure.”

If the older man senses any sort of hostility, he either ignores it or is biting back the urge to sneer at Merlin. “What’s your trade?”

“Physician.”

The pastor’s eyebrows shoot up. “That is good news,” he murmurs, and this time looks sincere, “there have been more sick townsfolk than healthy these past few months. We need all the help we can get in these… trying times.” His expression is dark, and his hands clasp behind his back. Merlin’s own posture has grown rigid. Remembering who he’s talking to – someone who might very well have a personal vendetta against anyone who takes a witch’s side – he forces himself to relax. Wouldn’t want the man to know there’s another witch (well, sorcerer) parading around the town, right under his nose. It would be almost funny, if it wasn’t so serious.

Merlin gives a terse nod, and fiddles with a loose bit of thread on his thick cloak before responding. “I shall do my best.”

“Hmm… Like I said, you should most certainly stop by my home tonight, after sun sets. It is not yet so cold out that the fresh air will do more harm than good. You sound like a man who has an interest in the inner workings of Salem’s laws and regulations. And witchcraft, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Wh-what?” Merlin sputters, but luckily for him, it isn’t what he thinks.

“You’re taking a great interest in these trials, and making claims about the accused when you hardly know what sort of laws we follow around these parts. Rather stringent, perhaps, but they are… effective.”

******

He doesn’t go to the local tavern tonight like he usually does. Not to drink, no, he doesn’t really go for that sort of thing these days – frequenting taverns for a mug of ale and some local gossip was never one of those habits he ever got into. He just prefers the food _there_ to the food he’s attempted to make for himself time and time again.

More than eight centuries of traveling the world and discovering some of the finest foods that there are to be eaten, yet he still can’t properly fix himself an egg without something going wrong. Although he can still make a mean rabbit stew. But of course, he’d rather not eat the same thing every single night. He supposes he’ll learn some new recipes eventually.

The entrance to the pastor’s home is darkened. The only light he can see from the outside of the wood and brick establishment is the single candle flame illuminating one of the upstairs windows. Merlin scowls, but then sets his jaw, and determinedly marches inside.

It isn’t difficult for him to see in the dark. Without speaking a word, he wills a tiny globe of hazy light into existence, floating soundlessly just ahead of him, and he knows that no one is around to see the small feat of magic. Just as well, even if someone did see the light from outside, it could easily be mistaken for another candle, or a lantern.

The stairs creak, but he doesn’t care. The pastor is probably too busy writing an essay on the joys of witch-torture or something, or at least too busy to notice that someone is slowly heading up the single flight of sagging steps with great care not to be heard.

He allows the light to guide him along until he reaches the landing at the top, at which point he extinguishes the hazy globe in the blink of an eye.

_Creak, creeeak_

The floorboards up here are in even worse disrepair than the rest of the house. He can see straight into the only room on this floor with an open door, which is where the candle light flickers, along with a small fire in the grate of a mediocre fireplace.

Merlin dissolves the ball of light in a blink, and not a moment too soon.

The creaking of the late night visitor grabs the man hunched over the desk’s attention, and pastor McIntyre turns in his chair to glance out of the room. A grin cracks across his lined, bearded face.  

“Ahh, Murphy. Did you have a good supper before you got here?”

“Merton.”

“Of course, of course. Why don’t you take your cloak off and stay awhile?” he jokes, a grin appearing while he takes in the young man’s stiff demeanor.

“You told me to stop by tonight, so here I am.”

“Come in, sit, sit! Always a pleasure to have guests. Afraid I don’t get many these days.”

Figures, thinks Merlin. But the pastor only chuckles and ushers Merlin towards the chair across from his own. Merlin wastes no time with the usual formalities – this man doesn’t really deserve such a luxury, truth be told.

He unsnaps the fastenings at his throat and drapes his cloak over the back of the chair. “The girl back at the trial today, the one accused of witchcraft with only those rubbish testimonies-”

“Getting right to the meat of the matter, are we?” The pastor appears amused, but not the least bit surprised. He nods gruffly and leans over to his desk to grab a polished wooden pipe, before plucking a bit of tobacco from a tin next to a pristinely-kept, leather-bound Bible. “You wouldn’t happen to have a match, would you?”

Merlin makes no move to even suggest that he doesn’t. Pastor McIntyre shrugs, and digs around a small pile of papers on the desk, until he finds what he’s looking for. He singles out a match from the little matchbook and strikes it, which adds a bit more light to his bright eyes for the ten seconds he manages to take up, just to light his pipe. “Can I offer you a drink?” He asks after a thoughtful puff. The tobacco smoke clouds in his face for a moment before thinning out. “I keep a rather nice stash of imported brandy in the back if you-“

“No, thank you.” Merlin waves a hand dismissively. “I try not to drink this late at night,” he explains, “and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to waste such a quality spirit on someone like me, anyway.”

Not understanding the implication and instead assuming that the young man is just exhibiting good, Puritan humility, the pastor holds up a finger with a toothy grin, then makes to get up from his seat. “Nonsense! You must absolutely try it. And besides, I’d make any excuse possible just to open up one of those bottles. It would be a waste _not_ to drink it, mister Gusterson.”

Merlin keeps his face impassive. He’s removed his winter hat, and now busies himself with examining the brim with dull fascination while the pastor clinks around glasses in the background, rummaging in a cabinet for his so-called stash.

When the man returns, he carries two glasses in hand, each filled up about a third of the way with the spirit.

Merlin accepts his glass and takes a sip from the honey-colored liquid. His nose scrunches at the strange taste.

Then he catches the expression on the pastor’s face; the pastor, who isn’t drinking the stuff himself, but instead watching Merlin intensely, like he’s meant to be doing something.

Uneasy, Merlin sets his glass down and gives the man a questioning look. After a moment, the older man looks like he’s finally remembered to breathe. He gives a small chuckle, and picks up his own glass, raising it to his lips after tipping it towards Merlin as if to say “cheers” before taking a good swig of the brandy. Just like Merlin, he makes a face.

Merlin feels he’s missed something.

“Heavily salted,” pastor McIntyre comments, as if that’s supposed to clear it up – whatever _it_ was. Merlin says nothing in reply, because he honestly has no idea what that was all about. Sighing, the other man sets his glass down behind him on the desk, then steeples his fingers in his lap. “I infuse all of my brandy with grade A salt, just in case… well, you understand I’m sure.”

“Um… in case what?” Merlin feels like he has a good idea where this conversation is going, but doesn’t voice his theory just yet, letting the pastor do the talking instead.

The pastor wags a finger at Merlin.

“Ahh, and here I thought you were so interested in witches. Didn’t you know that a weakness in witches is salt?”

“I… what?”

“That’s why I sprinkle it underneath my bed every night. Keeps their demons away.”

He looks so smug, and Merlin has to summon up all of his willpower just so that he doesn’t burst out laughing, because _salt_? Seriously? This man is clearly very, very misinformed. Perhaps Merlin should see this as a good thing.

“So, Merton, before we do discuss this business of witches and town law I must ask, where was it you came from, before deciding you would sail on a blasted ship all the way to Salem? Surely not just looking for a post as a physician!”

“Well, I know it might surprise some, but-”

“It _does_ surprise me. Europe is swimming with sickness, I would hardly think one would ever be short on patients.” He gives a chuckle, but Merlin doesn’t find the joke funny, and his expression remains blank. Deciding on the most agreeable answer, he finally offers a reply.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to travel somewhere far away from home, see as much of the world as possible. That’s the point of living, isn’t it? To expand your knowledge past the comfort of your own home?”

“Hm..” The pastor takes another swig of the salted brandy, then cringes, forgetting he’d salted it in the first place.

“I treated many in London, in Edinburgh, and in Cambridge, even Greece and Egypt.” The pastor is unable to keep the impressed look off of his face. But Merlin isn’t finished yet. ” I traveled to Croatia and the Maratha Kingdom, to Avignon and around there, to Spain, and back to England again. I’ve seen much on the other side of the water, and I wanted to see what it was like here.”

“I see…”

“And I knew that the voyaging ships would be in dire need of a good physician, of course.”

“Your accent,” McIntyre points out, “I can’t seem to place it. Are you from England? Or perhaps Ireland?”

“I was born somewhere near Wales, and after… ehm, after living a good portion of my life in England I moved to Ireland and remained there for a time.”

“And what part of England?”

Merlin thinks for a moment. “Hard to say. I just know it was near Wales. It used to be part of a great kingdom, apparently.”

Intrigued, the pastor leans in, drink forgotten. “Kingdom? You mean, before the United Kingdoms came to be, obviously.”

Merlin nods slowly, and forces himself to take another swig of brandy, holding back another sour face. “Exactly.” He doesn’t think the pastor will take it so seriously, seeing as no one really takes the stories of how the United Kingdoms had ultimately been formed too much to heart. But he does.

“And what was so great about the kingdom?”

He doesn’t have to think on that one too much. “Wealth, a great military, loyal subjects, and a great king.”

“Sounds too good to be true. All that without a catch? Must’ve been a real Camelot of a kingdom.”

Merlin nearly chokes on his drink, and quickly puts it down. The pastor’s brow furrows, but that might only be because he’s worried the younger man might not be good with holding his alcohol. Once Merlin’s cleared his throat, he says, “Yes, I guess you could say that. An incredible kingdom, overcame many obstacles, but it fell. Because the king,” his voice suddenly decides to stop working. The pastor allows him the moment of pause. “Well, you understand,” Merlin finally says. His voice is hoarse when he ends, “And so the kingdom became lost.”

“Sounds like Arthurian legend if ever I heard it. What was the kingdom called? Before it became part of the United Kingdoms, obviously.”

“Actually, it _was_ rumored to have been Camelot.” He even throws in a cheeky smile for good measure, knowing that the pastor has been treating the whole of this conversation as something of a joke. Sure enough, the older man doesn’t take the words too much to heart. At first. He laughs for a good minute and sips at his drink, thinking. Eventually, he settles down enough to talk again.

“Huh! Camelot, eh? You know, there’s another reason why that kingdom fell.”

Merlin’s heart sinks a little. “…Was there?”

Pastor McIntyre sobers for a moment, and wags a wrinkled finger in the air, like he’s about to make a very important point.

“Camelot fell because of the evil sorceress, Morgana.” Hearing that name aloud, especially by someone other than himself, sends a sting through Merlin’s chest. He’s never wanted to hear the name again, and now, of all times, here it is again. He can’t seem to shake her. The pastor still has more to say, though.

“It fell because of magic. The legend of Camelot is nothing more than that: a _legend_. And it was created to warn of the dangers of allowing magic into one’s life, clouding the mind and impeding judgment. It is a lesson to be learned. Sorcery and witchcraft are evil practices, and must be destroyed if we are to remain happy.”

With a final nod, the pastor takes up his glass again and downs the remainder of his drink, oblivious to Merlin’s speechless stupor. He knows he’s going to be in for a long night.

******

The wind howls, late autumn air seeping into his bones as he heads back to the residence he’s been designated for his stay as a physician. They’re small quarters, situated above the open room where patients come and go, sometimes staying the night in the makeshift beds with moth-eaten blankets. He wants to get back to his own bed, and try to forget about the few hours spent in the company of pastor McIntyre, who had, in the end, refused to extend Leah Griffon’s time within which to collect evidence. So he was going to help her. But now, he just needs to get home. He’ll deal with the issue at hand come morning.

But a movement out of the corner of his eye stops him from getting past the first house after the pastor’s.

He turns slowly, wondering if anyone else could be out at such an hour. It isn’t until he turns around that he realizes he’s standing just a ways away from the platform with the hangman’s noose – the one that he’d seen in action only two weeks ago.

What he hadn’t noticed since then was the apparent bars underneath the platform, a sort of cellar built in underneath where someone might be able to stand up and look out from within – assuming one was mad enough to go in there. And it looked like someone _had_ managed to find their way in, but certainly not by choice.

“Hey!” the hushed voice is coming from the prison-like cellar underneath the execution platform. Merlin recognizes the voice, but can’t quite place it. Then it comes again, this time more irritated. “Hey! Yes, you! You’re the one from the trials, yeah? Come over here!”

Deciding he’d better get over there before the voice decides to raise and wake the entire town, he hurries over to the source of the commands.

As he gets closer to the wooden cell, he begins to make out a face.

Dark hair, long and once lightly curled, but now limp and lackluster from spending little less than twenty-four hours holed up here. Big, childlike eyes stare back at him through the wooden bars. Merlin stops.

“Aren’t you the man who spoke up for me during the trial?” she asks in a loud whisper.

“My name is Merton.”

“Leah.”

“I know, I was at your trial.”

If it wasn’t so dark, Merlin ascertains that the woman would be smirking up at him. He wishes to be face to face with her and quickly kneels down, so that he can see into the cellar.

“I’m not the first to be stuck in here, but I guess you already knew that,” Leah murmurs. Her voice is steady, but Merlin knows she feels anything but. She’s been sentenced to death, unless she can find suitable evidence in her favor; and holed up in here, she doesn’t have a chance. Not without him, it seems, he can see that now.

“A girl named Tituba was accused a couple months before I was, you know. She was let free, but the day afterwards she was nowhere to be found. And my friend, Sarah – she was also accused of witchcraft, and… and sentenced to death. Not long before you arrived here, actually. She was a good woman, so kind, never treated a soul with an ounce of disrespect. My best friend….” She chokes out, and her face begins to wet with tears. “And they burned her.” A chill runs down the length of Merlin’s spine. Her next sentence only makes it worse. “She wasn’t a witch.”

Merlin opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again. What does he say to something like that? She might not believe him if he so much as tries to empathize with her. But that’s about all he can do.

“Leah, I know you might find this hard to believe, but I once knew someone…” he closes his eyes, forcing back the emotion behind the memories, “someone who was in nearly the same position as you are now.”

“And she was a witch?” Leah sniffles, and Merlin refrains from immediately shaking his head no.

“She was young, too young to die” he answers, and his voice is thick with the memory. “And she had gifts. But she was also cursed when she was a child, and because of this curse she could never lead a normal life. I wanted to help her. I almost did.” His gaze loses focus and pierces through Leah, staring into nothing. “I almost saved her. But I was too late.”

Leah winces and takes her hands away from where they’d been clinging to the barred little window. The cold air that whistles around the bars of the dingy cell makes the thin material of her cloak flap around her arms, and she shivers, teeth clacking together. “I was going to ask you to help… but it might not be enough. You can’t save me,” she mutters through her chattering teeth. “You don’t understand what this is like. No matter what sort of evidence you bring to them, they won’t let me get away. They want a scapegoat.” Bitter tears sting her eyes, and she stubbornly wipes them away.

“I don’t know exactly what it’s like for you, but I’ve been through many similar ordeals, believe it or not.” Merlin presses his lips together, offering up a tight smile for a sentence that falls on disbelieving ears.

After a brief glance-over of Merlin, sitting quietly on the other side of the bars and appearing fairly normal, Leah’s head drops to face the ground. She’s finished with these games. “I have magic, and I’m persecuted because of it. They put me in chains, and I’m starting to think I might deserve it.” Merlin looks stunned. “No, I didn’t do any of those things they said back in the courthouse” she assures quickly,” but I’ve lied. I’ve lied so many lies, watched so many people suffer when I just wanted to help them and didn’t know how. I knew if I revealed myself, this would happen. First Sarah, and now me. We are punished because we are different. And _you_ …” she stares at Merlin, her gaze fixed and hard. “You are no witch” she seethes, and Merlin understands that she isn’t being bitter towards him, but to the circumstances.

“True,” he answers softly, and Leah gives a humorless laugh before running the back of her hand underneath her nose as she sniffles again. It’s getting colder as the night drags on. “But I _am_ a sorcerer.”

The young woman’s head snaps up. She wonders if she’s heard him right, or maybe she’s just become so desperate at this point that she’s only hearing what she wants to hear. She shakes her head, but the look on Merlin’s face is not that of someone who’s lying to spite her.

“I’m a sorcerer, Leah” he explains calmly, and Leah’s eyes are suddenly huge, and glistening with even more tears. She doesn’t believe it. Merlin can tell that she really wants to. She wants it to be true, so very much. “My name isn’t even Merton Gusterson.”

“Then wh-“

“I am Merlin. To the druids I am Emrys.”

The silence that follows is deafening. They both shiver in the maddening cold of the night.

“I…. I know both of those names.” He’s sure she does. He had at least been expecting her to know the name Merlin. For some reason, that one became the more famous of the two within the past couple of centuries. Anyone who knew anything about the United Kingdoms or sorcery would recognize it. “If you truly are who you say you are… then you are a legend and a half.”

“No” he insists quickly, “Just a person. A person with magic, but still a person.”

“Not to mention older than batty old pastor McIntyre.”

He laughs. It’s not forced, he just finds it funny that the _only_ other thought to pop into Leah’s mind, rather than how he’s one of the most powerful sorcerers to ever live, is that he must be really, really old. Well, he supposes that's true.

 _She_ , on the other hand, is far too young to die.

And he decides, right then and there, that he isn’t going to let her suffer like this.

To hell with rules. To hell with keeping up appearances.

With one more look at Leah, shaking in the cell, convinced that she somehow deserves this twisted fate, he stands up. “No.”

“You’re thinking of helping me escape, aren’t you?”

He frowns. “Well… yeah?”

Why had she sounded like it was already a lost cause?

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand, Merlin. I don’t care if you have magic. This isn’t your fight. I must stay here and take whatever punishment awaits me.”

“But you _don’t,_ Leah!” then he has to remind himself to keep his voice down. “Please, listen to me, your life is valuable, and the opinions of these people here in Salem aren’t worth the mud on your shoes. I can help you get to some place safe. I can get you to New York, or maybe further south somewhere – I could even get you on board a ship for London if that’s what you want. But you’re not staying here to die.” Before Leah can say another word, he’s stepping away from the cell.

“Stand back” he commands, and Leah is quick to back up in the cellar, watching with bated breath.

Clearing his head, he breathes in deeply, then extends a hand to the sealed door located around the side of the platform.

_“Tóspringe!”_

The burst or wood scattering around his feet sounds like an enormous explosion in his ears, but in reality, it isn’t actually that loud. Well, it hadn’t been loud enough to wake any of the townsfolk up, so that’s a relief.

Still, they’ll notice immediately once someone catches sight of the busted up bars scattered around the center of the town square. There’s even a bit of the platform itself that’s been singed. Just for good measure, Merlin whispers something under his breath, and the noose above them crumbles to ashes. They can say it was witchcraft, but they won’t be hanging this witch any time soon.

“Take my hand and follow me” he demands with an outstretched hand.

“You know, I’m sure I could’ve just done that myself” Leah mutters, but she takes his hand anyway, and allows him to lead her towards the stables. Their rides out of this town await them there.

Merlin will take her as far as she decides is safest for her. And once that’s done, all he can do is get the hell out of this country before they come for him, too.

People are disgusting creatures, sometimes. But Puritans especially.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there friends, I'm planning to put up the next chapter between January 10th and 12th, thanks! I've got big plans for this story, but it's not going to be rushed. Very much the opposite of rushed, really. Enjoy!


	6. The Ghost of Arthur Pendragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I'd have this chapter up by the 12th, but hopefully half an hour into the 13th can still count, right?

It’s snowing.

Not the heavy, wet kind. Just flurries, gentle and dry, settling on his cloak to create a constellation against the dark material. Snowflakes stick to his eyelashes before he blinks them away. It hasn’t even begun to get dark outside and he’s nearly upon his destination.

Across the marshy field lie the ruins of an old English mining house, situated a few miles outside of a charming little village on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. Disguised to look like the ruins of an old mining house anyway.

It looks wholly unapproachable, the haunting, decrepit stone structure in the middle of the moorland where stories are told of will-o'-the-wisps leading many a traveler to their ends, drowning them in the marshes or causing them to be lost in the middle of nowhere for all eternity. But once Merlin crosses the barrier of enchantments he’d cast outside where the lower town had once been, the "ruins" no longer look like ruins.

To his eyes, a castle towers before him, hidden in plain sight. 

Intact and only a little bit weathered from time, the fortress's turrets still stand tall, only missing a few spikes here and there. But anything wooden - like the doors and the drawbridge - have long since rotted away, mostly. A few stone statues of saints and figures older than history can remember are missing their limbs, or sometimes parts of their heads. One lone statue of a long-forgotten knight is missing his nose, and he looks rather put out by it.

All that remains of the portcullis is a crisscrossed skeleton of iron bars. The outer edge went to ruin long ago, but the courtyards have some substance left to them with a few remaining statues and a crumbling fountain fighting to stay standing. Just until the elements decide they’ve served their time long enough.

It seems the last war that caused the fall of Camelot hadn’t been so ruinous that they’d taken the fortress along with it. Although, the residents never returned, and never would again.

The stone of the castle itself holds strong. The formidable medieval structure is still proud enough for Merlin to look at and smile as the fortress enters his vision.

_Home_

Cloaked from prying eyes and completely protected by his magic, even after all this time. The area surrounding is lush and green as it ever was, now that every other structure and little hut, everything that had once been the lower town, has fallen away with time, buried and nearly forgotten by all but one person. 

He’s hopeful this time, coming back to visit his old home. 

All day he’d been exhausted from riding, taking no rest for himself and only stopping when Cliodhna, his horse, needed a drink. The trip had been a long one, a trek from Cardinham all the way up to Bodmin. No villages in sight until he was nearly upon the castle – at which time the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and stood on end, sensing the enchantments that he himself had put in place many years ago.

He’d passed through the village, but spoke to no one besides the girl who sold him a few apples in exchange for a silver coin. She’d seemed more than pleased with the payment. Obviously, the people of the village weren’t exactly well off.

He plans to give good pay to whoever would allow Cliodhna to spend the night in their stable.

It had given him quite the turn when a shock of bronze caught his attention out of the corner of his eye and he'd twirled on the spot, leaving the saddle bag open and the apples forgotten.

Was that…?

A sharp gleam of blue, a hint of what might have been the sun glinting off freshly polished armor – or maybe he’d just been seeing things.

He'd turned back around to grab the reins of the chestnut mare when a small huddle of shoddily clothed villagers passed by without a word to him, casting him apprehensive looks. His gaze was drawn to the side of one of the stone and brick homes.

He had been so sure – _so_ sure – of what he’d seen: A figure in full royal regalia, chain mail, a red cloak, gold insignia and all, standing alone by the little house.

Merlin had had such a shock that he’d actually tripped over his own feet and nearly ran into Cliodhna, but managed to turn and catch himself just before he hit the ground.

When he’d turned back around, the figure was gone.

******

Flurries swirl in the winter wind, which has really started to pick up. He should probably get inside, seek shelter from the cold and start a fire.

He knows that a stone castle isn’t exactly the warmest place in the world, but anything would be better than sleeping outside at night in the snow. He would know.

He can still remember stumbling back towards the castle with one drunken Gwaine after a particularly long visit to the Rising Sun tavern, and waking in the middle of the night freezing his face off – having somehow fallen asleep in the stables. Never again.

He doesn’t know why that memory is so starkly vivid in his mind after all these years but it is, and it draws up the corners of his mouth into a smile before it's tugged back down, his teeth chattering from the cold. He wraps himself more tightly in his jacket and wonders why that's the only memory he can think about now. Probably because it seems so hilarious (although back then, he’d just been lucky to have kept all his fingers and toes before the frostbite could set in).

He and Cliodhna reach the outer walls of the citadel, and in a moment is dismounting and gathering the few things he's brought with him. Just a saddle bag stuffed with some travel supplies, and a rucksack with a few spare shirts, apples, and a few other odds and ends.

Each step feels like an eternity as he approaches the main gates, and he feels like something has mysteriously become lodged in his throat, because either he swallowed something that didn't quite make it all the way down his windpipe, or he's forgotten how to breathe.

The bridge hasn’t collapsed entirely, although he still has to tread carefully before making his way across the courtyard and up the steps, towards the doors that have miraculously endured over the centuries. Merlin can feel the lingering magic in the air, still so powerful after so much time since the wards were cast. Undoubtedly, it had congregated here and there, more concentrated in some parts of the castle than in others, holding together that which might not normally last more than a few decades against the elements. Like the doors.

They should have rotted away like the bridge but instead they persist, solid and sure, staring Merlin in the face in passive silence. A contradiction to nature.

A testament to his power.

He’s sure that at least some of the fireplaces in the castle haven’t crumbled to nothing since the last time he visited, which was about… two hundred years ago? With a wave of confusion he racks his brain trying to remember which century it was that he’d last visited his beloved home. He’s pretty sure it was back in the late sixteenth century, but he can’t be certain.

But then, he’d only approached it from the outside the last time he came here. He hasn’t been back inside the citadel for a much longer time.

Most of the furniture within the castle is no more, he already knows that, except for anything made of stone of course. He’ll have to make do. Which shouldn’t be too difficult with magic on his side.

******

He still remembers every inch of the castle like he never even left the place, and makes his way down the corridors now dusty with cobwebs and debris. With a wave of his hand he vanishes the cobwebs in each corridor he passes through. It’s not much, but it’s something. It hurts his heart to see the halls of this place look so… sad.

Nothing will ever make the halls look like they once did, all lit up with torches and filled with warmth and people. There isn’t a torch in sight, of course. He remembers the candles he had made sure to bring, which he plans to use once he finds the best place to stay the night.

It turns out to be frustratingly difficult to find a room with the windows still intact.

He would be able to fix them up in a snap, but some of the rooms don’t even _have_ broken windows, just empty spaces which used to be fitted with colorful windowpanes.

The next door he opens reveals another room, once belonging to one of the knights he’d never really known well, with a bed still there – thank the gods for the enchantment, at least, which is keeping some things within the castle intact – but still no windows. Why are they all missing? He wonders to himself but continues to the next room, down the corridor and around the corner, vanishing more cobwebs as he goes. Then he gets to the next door, bigger than the others.

His heart clenches.

He can’t spend the night here, and he won’t.

But he wants to look, anyway.

It’s been years.

With a loud whine from the ancient, creaky hinges, Merlin pushes the door open and steps inside. A wave of relief washes over him at the sight waiting for him.

There’s the bed, not at all rotted away but perfectly unscathed and intact, even the sheets and pillows have lasted through centuries of neglect. Preserved, he supposes, because of the magic. It must have known where to go, known which rooms were more important than others. Merlin has to give himself some credit as he steps into the king’s chambers. It’s like no one ever left.

Except everyone did.

Colorful as ever but dulled from time, the windows are still there and undefiled, not so much as a crack in the mosaic of glass, nor a tear in the velvety crimson curtains hanging above the bedframe.

He can see outside that the snow has slowed down, and the day’s last shreds of sunlight pierce through the glass panes, the light hitting the mantle over the fireplace.

A thin layer of dust coats the chest of drawers, as well as the trunk at the foot of the bed, but much less than there should be. With a swallow, Merlin walks to the table near the bed.

There, in pristine condition, is the brooch once belonging to Ygraine Pendragon, bearing the queen’s sigil. A gift that Merlin had been hesitant to accept. Here it had remained after he’d decided it was better to keep it here in the citadel in a place where it belonged, safe and protected.

Merlin would always know exactly where it was, without having to fear.

With careful fingers Merlin reaches for the brooch and takes it in his hand, smiling. The brooch has some reinforcements, obviously, a few extra enchantments to keep it from wearing over time, and to keep it from thieving hands should another sorcerer somehow find their way past the citadel’s protective wards. Not likely, but still possible.

He traces the sigil with a finger, then places it back where he found it.

He takes a steadying breath and walks to the side of the bed, where he kneels, folding his hands reverently as if in prayer and resting them atop the mattress. It’s only then that he allows himself to cry.

He lets his forehead come to rest on his hands, and his body sags from the relief of letting the tears flow freely, shoulders shaking, breath coming at irregular intervals.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks once he can breathe again. His voice echoes in the otherwise empty chambers.

It feels strange, having no one else to take up space in the room, answer him, make a joke about how he’s just being overly sensitive and how he should get back to work. “I’m still here, you know that?” he manages a laugh, not because anything’s funny, but he’s not doing it bitterly, either.

All right, maybe he’s a little bitter. But who wouldn’t be, after a couple hundred years with not even the smallest shred of hope to go on?

“I’ve made more mistakes than I can count” he confesses, as if he’s in the presence of someone who’s just hearing the news for the first time. “I’ve been wanting to end this, but I keep telling myself that it’ll just be another day. Just _one more_. And then one more after that. And I always say it’s just one more day but it never is. I don’t want to give up on the one reason I’ve got to stay here.”

His hands clasp more tightly together in an effort to control the painful sobs wracking his body.

"I turned one thousand today, Arthur."

The words sound so loud, too loud to him in the too-empty room, which is so quiet that he can hear his own heart pumping away, same as it has been for the past millenium.

The weight of it is unbelievable. He's a thousand years old. He couldn't have felt the weariness of his age more than he feels it now.

“Just do me a favor, would you?” The tears come to an abrupt halt, although his face is already soaked. He wipes under his eyes with the back of his hand “I know I’ve asked you countless times already, but you just don’t seem to be listening, do you? That seems to always be your way isn’t it?” Another mirthless laugh, and then he swallows down the rest of the tears. “So I’m asking you again.”

The next breath he takes makes his shudder.

Sniffling, Merlin lifts up his head and pleads into the empty space. “Stop being such a bloody prat and come back already.”

For just a breath of a moment, he feels something warm on his shoulder, a warm breath on his neck. The feeling doesn’t scare him, but instead makes him feel something akin to familiarity. Comfort. Like a proud pat on the back from an old friend, quick and filled with more meaning than words could ever convey.

“ _Merlin_ ….”

His breath catches.

He could swear on his life that he’d just heard a voice, whispering to him. Not just any voice, either.

" _Merlin..._ "

He turns his head to look.

No one is there.

The curtains flutter faintly, even though the windows are closed and no breeze could possibly have come through.

After a few more minutes of kneeling there next to the unnaturally intact bed, he finally gets to his feet, wipes his face dry with his sleeve, and forces himself to walk back towards the door, out of the bedchamber.

He closes the door slowly behind him and walks back the way he came.

******

It isn’t until he passes the throne room, on his way to the physician’s quarters, when a flash of light catches his eye. He turns to follow the light, which flickers like a flame. Wait...

They _are_ flames.

There’s a fire on the other side of the doors. A  _fire_ … in the throne room?

Merlin instantly quiets his footsteps and hastens over to the closed double doors, taking care not to breathe too loudly to avoid giving himself away. Taking measured footsteps, he peeks in through the crack between the two doors.

Sure enough, it turns out he won’t be needing to start a fire.

Because someone is already there.

Through the minute crack in the doorway, a man in a frayed, hooded cloak sits calmly next to a fire crackling in a makeshift fire-pit in the middle of the throne room.

“Greetings, Emrys” the man’s voice travels easily through the heavy wooden barrier as he lifts his hooded head to stare directly at the double doors, and Merlin has no doubt that the man is looking him in the eye.

The next time the cloaked man speaks, Merlin is stunned to find that he doesn’t move his mouth at all, yet the voice is crystal clear. “Please, come in.”

******

A delicious smell assaults his nostrils as he takes a seat across from the fire pit and the harmless enough stranger.

“Stew?”

In answer, Merlin’s stomach grumbles and he readily accepts the bowl offered him.

“You know who I am” he murmurs, eager to eat but not before he asks a question to ease his mind. “Don’t… don’t you think you should tell me who you are? Not really fair if you know my identity but I don’t know yours.”

“Names are unimportant” the man beside the fire dismisses Merlin’s suggestion. But he does give something by way of answer, even if it skips around the main question a bit. “I am a descendant of the oldest Druid clan. Our mission has always been to watch over the most powerful of the magic-wielders. You are right up there with the greats, Emrys. The very top of the list, in fact. My job, aside from keeping my family fed and sheltered, has been to watch for anyone who comes close to the wards you placed here so many years ago.”

“With good reason,” Merlin tilts his head to the side, scrutinizing. There's something the Druid isn't telling him. “So how did _you_ get past them?” his eyes narrow with the question.

“With some help from a very esteemed ally of the Druids, but that is not important either." With those words, he lifts a hand to pull down his hood. His face is older, the dark hair on his head greying, but his face is clean-shaven. "We mean no harm, our job is just to watch and to guard. Please, eat.” He nods towards the bowl in Merlin’s hand. “You look thinner than you did last I saw you.” Concern colors his expression and his voice. Merlin wants to trust him, but he knows he can’t be as blissfully ignorant as he used to be. Not without further question will this man gain his trust.

“And when was that? Where?” Merlin can’t keep the bite out of his voice, so he quickly stuffs a spoonful of stew into his mouth.

“A long time ago, in London,” the man recalls, not touching his own bowl. “Your path and the paths of the Druids cross more often than you’d think. Last I saw you was about thirty years ago, I believe. Although thirty years must feel like the blink of an eye to you, eh?” he surveys Merlin's expression for a reaction.

Merlin gives a snort, before he shrugs and downs another spoonful. He’s not going to give any answers until he gets a few more of his own. But that can wait until he’s at least eaten a proper meal.

He’s _starving_. This is his first decent meal in a while, the past few months haven’t been kind to him. Not much paying work to be found in… well, any part of Wales, really.

“My descendants have been keeping an eye on you, and seeing as they are now long dead, the responsibility falls to me.”

“ _What_ responsibility?” Merlin snaps, the spoon in his hand stopping short between the bowl and his mouth. “Spying on me?”

“Not spying” the druid assures, “I said we were keeping an eye on you, which is quite different.” Merlin keeps his expression under control before it turns annoyed. “I told you, we wish you no harm.”

Well, Merlin’s already figured that much, considering the man hasn’t made any move to kill him yet. That doesn’t mean he feels comfortable enough to let his guard down. But then again the man _is_ feeding him, so unless the stew is poisoned, he supposes the druid can’t be all bad.

“I am sorry, Emrys. The time of Arthur’s return is not yet for a little while longer.”

Merlin nearly spits out his stew.

“You’d… you had better have a damned good explanation for what _ever_ the hell you’re trying to play at,” Merlin hisses. “Why would you- You mean you _know_ when Arthur will come back?” He gets only a silent look in reply. “When? T-Tell me _._ ” He’s practically begging. Hell, there is no 'practically.' He  _is_ begging.

With a heavy sigh, the druid rolls his shoulders, like he’s got to be completely prepared for the next words that are about to leave his mouth.

" _Tell_ me," Merlin says again. He's desperate, and he's certain he sounds it, but he doesn't care. 

“I cannot say. And even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. But it will not be tomorrow, or next year, or even twenty or thirty years from now. But I do have some happy news: you have already braved the better part of it.”

“Meaning?” Merlin holds his breath, preparing for the worst.

“The time that you’ve already spent on this earth is nearly twice as long as the time you have left to endure.”

His heart feels like it might burst – that would mean he has less than five centuries to wait.

But the bad news is, that _could_ mean four centuries and ninety-nine years. That’s seven or eight lifetimes away.

He can do it.

He _will_ do it. For Arthur’s sake. Possibly for the world’s sake, although he can’t imagine the horrors that might await him, if Arthur is needed so desperately in order to return when the time does come.

“It might sound easy now, now that you have a closer estimate to go by. But I warn you, Emrys, the years won’t be as easy as you think.”

Merlin shakes his head to clear it. “If Arthur is really going to come back, any amount of time is worth it, surely?” he rationalizes. But the druid shakes his head solemnly, and Merlin’s heart sinks.

“Emrys, I want to tell you a story.”

After a brief but tense pause, Merlin nods for the druid to go on. After all, what’s he got left to lose?

The druid nods in return. “There was once a very young boy, and he was fascinated with the world and all of its beauty. He was youthful and kind, he loved others unconditionally. The boy wanted nothing more than to help others.”

Merlin blinks, and when the druid motions towards the place on the ground across from him, he scoots forward closer to the fire to listen. The druid takes a breath and goes on, hands restless, as if he can’t tell the story without moving them every two seconds.

“Now, this young boy had a mentor. This mentor was very old, and wise as an owl. One day, the little boy was walking through the forest when he caught sight of a small, silky thing, hanging low on a tree branch. Curious, he went up to the tree, and took the small object back to his home. When he reached his mentor, he asked, ‘Master, what is this?’ His mentor answered sternly, ‘That is a silkworm’s cocoon.’”

Merlin wonders where this story could possibly be going, but he doesn’t interrupt, just huddles closer to the fire, wrapping his jacket around him more tightly. It feels good to be wearing something familiar. Jackets like these should never go of style. He hasn’t let go of it ever since his days as a Camelot servant.

The druid man rubs his hands together thoughtfully and hums to himself.

“The master wagged a finger at the boy and told him, ‘In a little while, that cocoon will hatch, and a beautiful silk moth will appear. But I caution you, boy, do not try to help it out when it is hatching.’ The boy gave his word that he would not help it when it began to hatch.”

“Why-” Merlin’s question is cut off by a hand waving to shush him.

“Ah ah! If you want to know why, you’ll have to listen. Where was I… ah!” he clapped his hands together. “ _So,_ he kept watch over the cocoon, and in a few weeks’ time, the cocoon trembled, and a silk moth began to emerge. But it looked like it was struggling quite a bit, its wings were so frail, and the boy felt such sympathy for the silk moth that he decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a little push.”

Merlin decides he knows where this story’s going, that the boy will get in trouble for not listening to his mentor, and end up paying dearly for his mistake while the silk moth lived happily – not realizing that someone had helped it succeed, and was even being punished for it.

He doesn’t, however, say a word, and allows himself to become engrossed in the tale once more.

“So the little boy gave the cocoon a gentle nudge from the back, and out popped the little silk moth. The boy smiled wide when the tiny creature took off, flying around the room, just as beautiful as he’d hoped. But his happiness was short lived, because after only a few minutes, the silk moth dropped to the ground. Dead.”

Merlin doesn’t realize his mouth has fallen open a few centimeters.

The druid doesn’t notice and scratches his chin, lost in his story.

“The boy ran to his mentor holding the dead silk moth, and with tears streaming down his face he said, ‘Master, the silk moth… it’s dead.’ His mentor frowned deeply, and asked, ‘Well, did you help it when it was hatching?’ ‘No!’ said the boy, but then gave a guilty look and said, ‘Well, maybe a little bit, but I did not mean for it to die!’”

The small fire in front of them crackles and spits out sparks, startling them both.

Watching Merlin closely now, the druid sits forward to finish the tale. “The mentor answered the boy, ‘I told you not to help it at all, and you failed to keep your word. I told you not to help the silk moth because it was _supposed_ to struggle. You see, little boy, the more it struggles on its way out, the stronger it becomes. You helped it along, and gave it no chance to strengthen itself. When it came out of the cocoon, it was too frail to survive. Now, you understand why I told you what I did?’ The boy nodded, and after that, he was much wiser…. And that, my dear Emrys, is a story for you as well.”

Merlin frowns and he shakes his head, still processing. “I’m not sure I understand – am I the little boy, or the moth?” The druid laughs slyly and shakes his head. “I can only guess that you’re the mentor” Merlin says.

“The mentor is irrelevant” enlightens the druid. “ _You_ , however, are the moth, yes, and for the past few centuries you’ve been struggling, craving flight but too stuck in your old life to find your way. And while you may not want to believe it, your struggles are not as pointless as you might think, Emrys.” He stares into the fire, a secretive smile crossing his features. “You will not be weak when the time comes for the Once and Future King to rise again – your destiny would make sure of that.”

“You… you mean to tell me that this is all about making me _stronger_?” Merlin clenches his hands into fists at his sides, and the druid gives him a wary look. “All this waiting is just to make me stronger? That’s… that’s ridiculous!”

He can’t help it, he can feel himself losing control, the energy of his magic crackling across the surface of his skin in his anger. “That’s not true. That _can’t_ be the reason.”

But the druid obviously thinks otherwise. “The time is not meant to be spent _waiting_ , it’s meant to be spent learning. And that is what you’ve been doing, whether or not you’re aware of it.”

“I’ve been traveling and teaching and going to universities, and trying to make a life again and again, only to have it swept away again and again. I’ve been trying to _help_ people, since I seem to have no other purpose to exist besides waiting.”

Merlin wishes he could – well, he’s not sure _what_ he wishes he could do. He doesn’t necessarily want to hit something, but with so much magic bubbling angrily just below the surface, he’s sure he’ll break if his next question isn’t answered.

“What was the point of all this?” he snarls, staring into the flames. “To go to more universities than I can count on my fingers by the time Arthur gets back? Read enough books to fill some quota or meet enough people that I want to tear my hair out whenever I meet someone who looks even _remotely_ familiar?” his voice steadily rises in pitch, near hysteria but not quite at that breaking point yet. “Spend all this time knowing that I couldn’t save the person I cared for so much that I keep seeing his face wherever I go, and the faces of the people responsible for his death even _more_ often?” His hands fly up to grasp at his hair, desperate for a straight answer so that his mind can finally be eased. “I see their faces everywhere. _Hers_ especially. Even in death, she’s there, like a waking nightmare. Why can’t I just go into a nice, peaceful sleep and wake up when I’m needed again?”

He shakes his head vigorously, pushes his empty bowl away harder than necessary and the scraping sound hurts his teeth. “This does not feel like a lesson in strength. It’s torture. That’s what all of the years up to this moment have been” he growls, tasting something sour in the back of his throat.

“Bloody _torture_.”

And that’s when he hears the break in his voice, right on the last word. Something else breaks, too – his self-control.

It’s only for a split second, but that second is enough for his magic to roil in his stomach and come roaring out, and before he knows it, the stone floor is cracking beneath him.

******

Once he’s calmed, Merlin realizes that his body feels as though it was recently used as a personal punching bag by the strongest man in the world. Then he looks down at the floor.

There’s a thin crack splitting the stone tiles, leading all the way up to the carved, wooden throne at the far end of the chamber – still intact from the protective enchantments, but not quite whole; Merlin’s fleeting burst of pent up anger seems to have split the carved wood right down the middle. His face flushes, embarrassed by his lapse in self-control.

“I’m... I'm sorry,” he whispers in apology. His shoulders sag, and he feels empty.

The druid looks troubled, but not angry.

Merlin would never have harmed him, but anyone who'd witnessed the unsettling level of power that Merlin infrequently displayed might be a little… disturbed, at best. Even the most well-trained magic users would be shaken. The druid definitely looks shaken.

Merlin was hurting, and had been doing so his entire life. And a _long_ life at that. Of course, the druid man knew that – like he said, he’d been keeping an eye on the great Emrys, apparently, and so had his ancestors.

What kind of family tradition involved stalking an immortal, brooding idiot with magic, anyway?

The most powerful sorcerer in the world had far better control than to let something stupid happen. Like setting this man’s hair on fire. At least, not by accident.

If he hadn’t already split the throne down the middle, Merlin might have started to consider it. He isn’t any less angry, but at least he’s calmer. More reasonable.

“You don’t need a formal education to learn about the world, Emrys” the druid murmurs, and he’s careful not to come off as hostile, hoping not to anger the warlock further. “The time you spend on this earth is so that you will be prepared for the time when you _do_ have to face our greatest threat again. King Arthur Pendragon cannot defeat this evil alone” he says cryptically. “And you cannot be a young, ignorant man when the evil returns. But if Arthur is to receive help from his most loyal friend – Emrys – then you have to learn how the world works, all its hardships, all its problems, their solutions, how to see people differently, how to _understand_ them.”

So far, most of this makes very little sense to Merlin. There are plenty of ways he could become stronger, smarter, more in-tune with the world.

He spent a decade living in a cave as a recluse, studying the art of meditation and living off the land. Twenty years mastering the viola, which he still remembers how to play like the back of his hand. Another ten years under the mentorship of a now-celebrated painter, being taught first-hand the disciplines of fine art. Four decades of intense training with two different masters in the martial arts and military combat had given him an edge that softened marginally when he went on afterwards to begin working in hospitals, all while studies in medicine only continued to grow. He'd not only learned things for himself, but he'd learned things in order to help others.

He had been a healer. A friend. A man of business, a man of medicine, a man of the arts, a man of the sciences. And a fiercely loyal friend to anyone who proved to be worth the time.

Thinking back, even after his first _fifty_ years of life experiences, Merlin realizes that his instincts had been nothing to scoff at then. They had been nothing to scoff at after his first five centuries of intense studying in dozens of disciplines, mastering them all or close enough. And those instincts and skills, honed throughout the years, are certainly nothing to scoff at now. Nor are his magical capabilities.

“You have to learn to be quick about knowing who you can and cannot trust.”

“Trust…” Merlin grinds through his teeth. He remembers putting his complete trust into people he never should have trusted to begin with, and he remembers the consequences. All too well.

“One of your earliest weaknesses was being too quick to trust. You continue to gain new weaknesses, but you’ve also been overcoming them very quickly. You’ve impressed many, including myself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do I seem like I don’t know what I’m talking about, Emrys?” the man casts Merlin an almost patronizing look. He’s bold, especially considering that, despite their difference in physical appearance, the druid is the younger man here. “You’ve already impressed me, shown great fortitude and promise to the generations before me, and during this past century alone I have been keeping a close eye on you. The Druids are not extinct. I thought that information, at least, would help you to feel that you are not alone.”

“And?” Merlin’s head is spinning. “I mean, that’s wonderful news of course, but what’s that got to do with Arthur?” His eyebrows scrunch together. He bites his lip, mulling over the information.

“Everything. There are people you will meet, and whom you have already met; They’re few and far between but they’ve been put into this world to help you along, teach you the virtues and values that matter in peace and in war. True peace.”

“I don’t… I’m sorry, I don't understand.”

“Even in death, the Once and Future king would never let his most loyal friend walk this earth alone. In more ways than one, he has already come back to you.”

Merlin is only too sure that he _does_ want to hit something now. The answers he’s receiving are even more frustrating than the questions themselves.

“You cannot afford to be on uneven ground during the fight.”

A fight? When had he mentioned anything about a fight?

The druid answers the unvoiced question for him. “It will be the most difficult battle you have ever known, and should you fail, the world will fall into complete discourse. There will be no mercy. Emrys, you must be ready.”

“And against whom will I be fighting?” He knows the answer. He’s afraid to hear it aloud all the same.

The druid man opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out. Instead of answering, he stands up and brushes himself off. Merlin gets up too, never taking his eyes off the druid for a second.

Merlin assumes the man just needs some time to get his thoughts together, perhaps he’s allowing Merlin the time to think over everything else before he worries himself even more. However, he can’t help but feel a smidge impatient when the air between them remains quiet, save for the rustling of wooden utensils and bowls being stacked together.

He asks again. “Please, who will I be fighting against? What evil will I have to face when Arthur returns?”

The man stops clearing up. He appears more than a little reluctant to answer. Afraid, even. Merlin knows he shouldn’t have lost control the way he did.

“I…”

“Please. Tell me.”

The man looks at him, right in the eyes. Something about him unsettles Merlin. Something about his face... something in the eyes. Something familiar. But maybe Merlin is just imagining things, considering he's met thousands of people who vaguely resemble each other.

"Please," Merlin repeats again.

“…Morgana Pendragon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Just as a side note, the story that the druid tells isn't an original, although it might not be super popular, either. The original story involves a butterfly but I figured, hey, switch it up.
> 
> Also, I really feel terrible about not having updated in such a long time, it's been over a month I think. I've been chipping away at the next chapter, but it's going really slow. Super busy, homework and studying, lots of practicing, not much free time. I do have big plans, though, and this story is by no means even close to finished. I promise I'm not abandoning this story to die. I swear. Hang in there!


	7. Honor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I will admit, this chapter took…. Well, forever. Forgive me, there’s really not a time when I’m not busy. Spring break has been merciful. Onward!
> 
> Pressing forward into the 1870s!

Plenty of people talked about Antonio Draconi, nicknamed the Dragon Tamer of Vogogna, and for good reason.

He was the best lawyer – as well as the only lawyer – in the quaint little village surrounded by mountains, a place dating back to the early fourteenth century.

Merlin remembers it very differently. He hasn’t exactly made frequent visits since his time as a traveling medical researcher (and sought-after medical consultant) in the late sixteen hundreds. The buildings haven’t changed so much since then, but it’s not like anyone from those days just so happens to still be living, so of course the people are new to him. The village really is a new one in spirit, even if the architecture isn’t much changed.

It’s with no small burst of relief that Merlin enters Vogogna, prepared this time to start fresh. Again.

Barely a century had scraped by since his unconventional – with _unconventional_ being an understatement – meeting with the Druid man who chose to remain nameless, even after divulging news to Merlin that might have ultimately transformed his outlook on the excruciatingly long life he was being made to endure.

There’s just a glimmer of comfort, something that keeps him going, buzzing around in his chest every time another year passes. Each one feels incredibly short, but at the same time drags on for an eternity. Another year, another step closer to ending this solitude.

He thinks about how much has changed in just thirty years alone.

Everything happened so _fast._

Too fast. Advancements in technology and a revolution of sorts in industry and production.

Christ, people can talk to one another from halfway across the world – without magic. That’s why he’s come to Italy, where things are much more laid back, people don’t care for the newest technology as much as they do in the United Kingdom or the States, preferring instead to focus on the arts, music, literature, food. Italy is a lovely place, as long as one keeps the right kind of company.

Which is why Antonio Draconi is everyone’s go-to man, and no one would ever think to get on his bad side. Antonio, Vogogna’s best lawyer. “The dragon tamer” to competing firms, but a kind man to his clients.

He's unusual, not so much in the way he goes about a trial itself, but the way he goes about treating his clients. He’s rumored to possess a very good moral compass – unheard of in lawyers these days, especially the Italian ones. Not that Merlin believes the stereotypes but… Well, he can’t say he hasn’t met some questionable Italian sharks in his lifetime.

The man looks to be in his mid to late thirties, very fit and very tan, unlike the fairer residents of the northern province in which his firm is located, hearty-looking and restless, youthful and kind in the eyes.

Before he’s even said two words to the man, Merlin immediately decides that he likes Antonio.

He steps into the cramped study and takes a look around the room filled with books and loose documents, organized helter-skelter into piles, some that reach almost to the ceiling. At first glance, the study is in complete chaos.

After further inspection, however, Merlin notices how the piles of books haven’t just been thrown about – there’s a pattern to the mayhem. A stack of thick books placed lengthwise by the wall, followed by another stack of thinner texts turned the opposite way, and various other stacks, each sorted by width, apparently, and Merlin recognizes compulsive hoarding when he sees it.

Clearly, Antonio hoards legal texts, and just like any organized hoarder, there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. And even if there isn’t any room left, there is always a way to make room.

Even if it means one must convert the broom closet into an additional book cupboard.

The impressive collection has Merlin taking everything in slowly as he removes his hat and pushes at the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. Every time he steps into a library of any sort, he immediately finds himself itching to grab the nearest book and start reading. He doesn’t know why, but law books are, for some reason, incredibly interesting to him.

He tells himself he hasn’t had _that_ much experience in law, just a spackling of courses here, a few years of law school there, a degree in government and maybe a few books on law in his repertoire – and by a few, that’s probably somewhere around a hundred, including original texts by some of the greatest philosophers to ever live. He doesn’t completely agree with the fame Thomas Aquinas has gotten over the years (the man was a right arse when Merlin asked about his work once in Roccasecca). But then again, his writings were fairly good. Good enough to help shape modern politics, at the very least.

Oh, and he’s been a legal advisor to over twenty sovereign rulers.

Not that he’s counting.

All right, so maybe Merlin’s perfectly qualified for this job. Perhaps even a little overqualified. But crime is rampant in these parts and if there’s one thing he’s promised to himself while he waits, it’s helping the people who have no one left to turn to.

Like the woman who was arrested just this morning in the marketplace, right in front of her own two children, all for stealing two apples because she had no money coming her way until the end of next month. That woman had no one, except her now-devastated little boy and girl. But, as luck would have it, Antonio has agreed to defend the woman in court at a fraction his usual cost.

Unlike many of the philosophers and lawyers Merlin’s met before, Antonio seems to have a reputation for going out of his way to help others. He’s _fair_. And better still is that he doesn’t care about the money, but nevertheless proves terrifying on the courtroom floor against a worthy adversary. In a town so small, everyone knows everyone. And everyone _loves_ Antonio.

The lawyer behind the desk stands politely when Merlin enters, crosses the room in three long strides – his legs are shorter than Merlin’s, but the man moves fast – and shakes Merlin’s hand between both of his own. His grey eyes give Merlin a brief once-over and the lawyer turns to go back to his desk, with Merlin following to sit across the desk in the chair normally occupied by clients of Antonio’s.

“So how long have you been practicing law, _signor_ …?”

“ _Merlo_ ” Merlin rolls the R in a seamless Italian accent. His Italian, he thinks smugly to himself, is particularly well-honed. He’s always loved Italy, he loves the language, and he makes a point to visit at least once a decade, always under a false name and always in a new region. The people are nice enough and the food is a _definite_ bonus. He likes to think he knows his way around Italy better than the Italians do – but he’d rather drop dead before telling an Italian that.

“Ah, _si,_ a very nice name. Did you know that _Merlot_ happens to be my favorite pick of wine?” A grin teases the ends of the lawyer’s mouth. He has the faintest traces of dark stubble around his jaw, but other than that he’s clean-shaven. What surprises Merlin the most is that Antonio doesn’t have a mustache. Most men his age that Merlin’s met thus far in Vogogna seem to like their mustaches quite a lot, mostly of the overly long, handlebar variety. No such animal resides on Antonio’s tanned face.

“The spelling of the name is a bit different than the wine, _signor Draconi_ ” he says, answering in perfect Italian.

“Is it your first name or surname?”

“First name. Surname is Emiliano _.”_

“All my clients are my friends, to me you are Merlo. How many years was it, Signor _Merlo_?”

“Um, I studied law five years back at Cambridge and earned my law degree in four of those years, so just one. Been practicing law for one year now, I mean.” He wonders how long it’ll take Antonio to figure out that perhaps Merlin has had a few more years of experience than just five.

“ _Si_ , very nice. The short experience is not an issue,” Antonio flutters a hand in the air vaguely. “Anyone can be whipped into shape with the right guidance. Are you here about the job advertisement in the paper?”

“That’s exactly why I’m here, actually. I thought it might be a good idea to come to you, in case you had any openings in taking on a new partner in the courtroom? A legal assistant, perhaps?”

The corners of Antonio’s mouth quirk up. “I do, as a matter of fact” he murmurs.

Merlin beams, and opens his mouth to respond, but Antonio isn’t done. “But your other credentials. I would like to know a few more things, if you would permit.” His tone implies that Merlin would be very, very wise to permit any questions of him.

“Of course.”

“Do you have any references? Where are you from? Obviously not an Italian, although your accent is remarkably good.” Merlin shrugs humbly, but Antonio isn’t fooled. “But you already knew that. You look young. Twenty-five? Just a guess.” The spitfire interrogation, a telltale sign of lawyers everywhere, is something that Merlin is not entirely unfamiliar with, but it takes him a moment to collect his thoughts all the same. The blunt curiosity is endearing, the lawyer’s face entirely honest in his questioning. No wonder so many people like him. Who doesn’t want to be asked about themselves?

Merlin humors him. “Close. Twenty-six.”

Antonio nods, like he already knew that but felt it polite to make conversation before getting to the good stuff. “And you come from…?”

“Wales. Originally, but that’s just my birthplace. Moved around most of my life. Lived in Ireland for a bit, then London, visited a few other countries – some on holiday and some for educational purposes,” Antonio nods again, understanding. Most people at that age would be traveling broadly, taking in as much of the world as they could before reality and steady careers sucked them back in.

“You could pass for an Italian,” he notes, after listening with sincere interest to Merlin’s story, “if you would only do something about that complexion of yours.”

He chuckles, nodding and waving a hand in Merlin’s general direction. Merlin doesn’t even bat an eye. He’s grown used to the comments about his pale skin, good-natured or otherwise. With his Welsh background, it’s really not _that_ strange to look like his skin has never seen the sun. His cheeks are already feeling the sting of the Italian summer heat, and he’s only been here two days. To an Italian, he must stick out like a sore thumb.

“I like you, _Merlo._ I will let you work with me.”

Merlin smiles.

“There is a catch, however. You will not be paid for the first two weeks of work. I need to see what you’re made of before I can be sure you will work well with me.”

“That’s not an issue.”

Antonio looks on in surprise. Merlin gives no reaction. But after mulling the decision over for a solid ten seconds, the lawyer claps his hands together. “Excellent! We begin immediately. Have you settled in? Perfect, we start with the first case coming up…”

He’s working for the defendant, coincidentally the woman Merlin had seen earlier at market. She’s a mother of four children – not two – but the other two are old enough to stay home by themselves and keep the home in order.

Their mother had stolen food, and now they would be labeled as the children of a thief, and spend the rest of their lives paying for it with money that they don’t have, unless their mother can win their case in court. The odds don’t look to be in their favor, nor their mother’s. Merlin listens with shrewd attention to every detail, asking questions when needed, jotting down notes as Antonio prattles on about the upcoming case.

Merlin can’t quite explain why it is he’s come here, but he knows there must be a reason. He comes to Italy fairly often, compared to other countries that aren’t part of the United Kingdom, but even so, Italy is a big place with plenty towns to choose from. He just had the feeling that he needed to come _here_ at this moment in time. It seems to happen often, and he wonders if it only happens when someone else has been born with the same or similar personas matching that of… well.

He still has trouble believing in the whole ‘reincarnation’ thing, which was more or less what the Druid explained to him, back in the citadel of Camelot. He doesn’t think it’s reincarnation. Not _really_. The idea is similar, but it’s not an exact match.

If he were younger and more naïve, he would say they were more like… coincidences. Happy coincidences. A coincidence that he just keeps on bumping into people who are simply drawn to him as much as he is drawn to them, getting along with them like he’s known them for ages, feeling completely at home in their presence, and feeling a pang of remorse when he tells himself he needs to move on to some place new.

Maybe they’re not Arthur, but maybe they are _parts_ of him, existing to stop Merlin from being so alone. Just until the day comes when all the parts match up, and the real thing will be standing right in front of him, like a puzzle all put together.

But since that isn’t happening any time soon, he’s going to sit in the worn leather chair in front of Antonio the lawyer’s desk and discuss the details of a trial – but more importantly, the details of where one can procure the finest bottle of _Merlot_.

Antonio finds it hysterical that Merlin’s ‘name’ sounds just like his favorite wine. Merlin doesn’t tell him that the brand name does, in fact, coincide with the name _Merlo –_ which is really just an Italian equivalent for Merlin (the bird).

Well. Anything goes.

******

Merlin decided long ago that he had not truly found love until he’d visited Persia in the late sixteenth century, where he first encountered that which had quite possibly been a gift from the gods themselves: Coffee.  

Gods, Merlin loved coffee. Here in Italy, he’s surrounded by the stuff, often in the form of espresso in tiny ceramic cups that fit into the palm of one’s hand, and could bring a person out of even the foggiest of stupors in the early morning. 

Like this morning, particularly. Merlin had had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get down to Antonio’s office, and gods have _mercy_ , the little espressos at the coffee vendor’s stall he’d found on the way to the firm were perhaps the best he’d ever sampled. Italy has some of the greatest coffee just in general, really.  No one rises this early in the morning unless they’re out tending to their chickens or having an early morning smoke, so Merlin doesn’t pass a soul on his way to the Draconi offices, fueled by the quick jolt from his espresso, which he’d knocked back without a second thought.  

The second the coins exchanged hands to pay for the drink, that coffee was already speeding through his veins, shouting, “ _You might crash the second you step foot into your own bedroom this afternoon but for the love of god you’re going to feel so great right about now!”_  

The espresso gods had spoken, and now Merlin can feel the effects of concentrated levels of caffeine spurring him on to get to the firm on time.  But he’s forgotten that here in Italy, everyone runs on Italian time. 

Meaning, no one gives a rat’s arse about being a few minutes late to work in the mornings. No one but Merlin, it seems. He ends up getting to the firm early, beating Antonio by a good twenty minutes. Antonio grins wide when he walks through the door to find his protégé, already prepared. “Merlo! Eager to get started are we?” 

“Sorry,” Merlin huffs out a laugh as he looks up from the paperwork to greet his new boss. “Didn’t mean to get here so early.” 

“No no! I’m glad you’ve taken some time to prepare. Tomorrow, we face the bane of the courtroom. We need to be on our toes or the prosecution will tear us to shreds before we’ve even breathed a word.” 

“Um…” Merlin lifts an eyebrow and waits for Antonio to explain himself. 

“Anita Tornerà is dangerous bird of prey” he mutters.  Anita Tornerà happens to be the name of the lawyer going against them the very next day, and according to Antonio she’s a force to be reckoned with. “And if you see her doing anything that she’s not supposed to do, or if you see anyone in the courtroom acting suspicious, you let me know right away. She’s a wily one. Can never be too careful, rumor has it she once rigged the jury by finding each one of their respective addresses and sent anonymous threats if they didn’t vote in her client’s favor. “ 

Merlin “hmm”s, and makes a note of it.

“Look for anything suspicious. Got it.” 

Antonio gives him a look of pride. “Perhaps you _will_ make a fine assistant yet. I’ll be in the other room if you have a question, but for now you can carry on with... what were you getting up to before I walked in?” 

“Just reviewing signora Rego’s files. She has no past criminal record, and carried no debts until just last month.” 

Antonio’s mouth presses into a grim line. “Yes. Her husband... _stronzo._ He walked out on the woman two months ago. She is such a sweet woman, I can’t understand what was going through that imbecile’s head when he left her.” 

Merlin’s mouth puckers into a frown of his own.

“That’s a shame.” And it is. He’s seen many cases like it before, but he promises himself he’ll help signora Rego in whatever way he can in order to ensure her name is cleared. He also makes a note to himself to find the woman’s address so he can drop off some food for her family when this is all over.

 ******  

On the day of the trial, Merlin finally understands all the gossip surrounding their soon-to-be opponent.

Everyone rises at the sound of the judge calling the court into session.

The defendant, signora Rego, is led into the room, thin and pale and looking like she’s about to burst into tears. Her huge, glassy eyes flicker around the room before she’s shown her seat at the front. She’s followed closely by Antonio. Merlin has taken his seat already, papers spread out in front of him and ready to go.

The woman has an incredibly slight figure and she’s very short. Merlin wonders whether or not she would fall over if someone only sneezed in her direction. He can tell that she’s younger than she looks, but the responsibility of looking after four children has taken its toll, that much is obvious.

Once the defendant is seated she immediately glances over her shoulder, nervous and overwhelmed, to look at Merlin with big, glassy eyes. Merlin gives her a thin-lipped smile, although he wishes he could offer better comfort. The defendant accepts the smile, anyway, and turns back around looking minutely less tense.

Then the prosecution is led out.

First is a middle aged man with no facial hair to speak of other than his eyebrows, which are wrinkled with distaste. According to Merlin’s files, this is the vendor who sold apples in the marketplace. The man has a noticeable paunch and wears glasses that must be two inches thick, making his eyes look owlish and a little unsettling. He takes his seat at the other end of the front of the room. _His_ lawyer follows close behind, landing on the direct opposite end of the attractiveness spectrum.

A young woman probably in her early thirties, quite obviously in her prime and she knows it. Raven hair, green eyes, the smoothest skin that Merlin has ever seen, and a pearly white smile, beautiful but cold. He can feel his blood chill to ice underneath his prickling skin.

It doesn’t look like the sorceress in any other sense, just the hair and terrifying smile that has Merlin convinced she’s some sort of reincarnation come to exact her revenge. He suppresses a shudder.

But the woman has the complexion of a southern Italian – tan, like Antonio’s – with flawless makeup and a glossy shine to her curled and pinned-up hair. She also has a mole just above her upper lip, and her gold, hoop earrings make her heart-shaped face look thinner. Her face is turned up, all angles, led by a sharp chin and a sharp nose, adding to the disdain that exudes from every bit of her.

Merlin takes his seat next to Antonio and reaches for the nearest stack of papers, shuffling them around in both hands, suddenly more anxious than he’d ever intended. The prosecution has left him unnerved.

Just thinking about the woman he'd killed… well, just looking at the lawyer on the other side of the room makes him remember things he would really rather not remember. Ever.

He shakes off the chilled feeling just in time for the judge to call the court to order.

The trial goes by in something of a blur.

All he knows is, Antonio is winning, and it’s going to be one of his easier cases. He’s seen enough of them to know. Be that as it may, the prosecution has been putting up a decent fight.

Hell, they’re putting up a _great_ fight. But it looks as though they don’t even come close to persuasion in like Antonio Draconi.

Merlin isn’t really needed for much, just to sort through the paperwork Antonio’s brought, and hand him whatever papers are necessary. He doesn’t speak, but he watches their client – the sniffling woman  - with detached interest, and keeps an eye on the prosecution. Especially Anita Tornerà.

 

******

The jury is finally led into a side room to meet and decide on the verdict.

A break is called, and everyone happily stands up to stretch their legs. People mill about, but no one leaves the courtroom. Merlin mutters to Antonio that he needs to use the loo, and heads in what he’s pretty sure is the direction of the men’s lavatory.

He turns the corner...

 And immediately bumps into someone standing in the middle of the narrow corridor.

“Oh! _Scusi, signora..._ ” he apologizes and steps back, only to realize that he’s just run – oh, damn – he’s just run into the Tornerà woman, who happens to be looking at him like he’s a piece of pond scum that floated into the hall without her permission.

“You should really be more careful” she says, her voice smooth and silky but filled with barely-hidden disdain.  “Wouldn’t want to end up on the wrong side of the defendant’s chair, would we?”

Hackles raised, Merlin bites back a retort that could have very well landed him in the defendant’s chair that same day. Instead, he takes a deep breath.

He will not let her get under his skin.

“Sorry. Wasn’t watching where I was going.” He doesn’t work very hard to hide the obvious sarcasm, and at least he holds back the sneer he would very much like to show her but doesn’t.

“No, I don’t suppose you were. Have we met before?” She seems to be studying Merlin very carefully. Like a shark. A very hungry shark. Well, she _is_ a lawyer, after all.

“I don’t think so. I’m sure I would remember meeting you.”

“I’m sure.” Anita rolls her eyes and turns on her heel, walking back into the courtroom, but not before Merlin catches something marked on the visible skin of part of her collarbone, just above the lowcut neckline of her blouse.

He only has a second or so before she’s gone, but he knows he saw something. The lighting is rubbish in here, and the mark, whatever it was, had been dark in color, but Merlin feels it’s safe to assume that Anita Tornerà has a tattoo somewhere near her shoulder.

He would have dismissed it as a trifle, but the more he pictures the shape sticking out on the bare portion of skin, he thinks of how the shape looks like something he’s seen before.

A curved, thick line, ending in a little swirl. Simple, but easily recogizable, especially when Merlin pictures the curved line attached to two more of the same with each pointing in a different direction. A triskelion.

When he reenters the courtroom to hear the verdict, everyone is sitting at attention. He risks a quick glance at the prosecution table as he goes to sit down, earning himself a fiery look from Anita Tornerà.

The jury heads out of their room in single file.

The verdict, much to the ire of the paunchy man sitting with the prosecution, is a unanimous “not guilty.”

The rest of his side reacts more subtly. But there is no mistaking the reserved air of defeat lingering around the prosecution table.

Antonio claps Merlin heartily on the back before the meeting is adjourned, and meets his client just as she’s approaching the defense table with cheeks soaked in happy tears. While Antonio consoles the disbelieving woman with his most winning smile, Merlin sneaks another look behind him, where the prosecution are getting up from their seats and leaving in a quiet huff, not wanting to throw away the last of their dignity.

As they go, Merlin notices that Antonio has excused himself from the conversation with his tearful client, and has begun to make his way down the side aisle in pursuit of the quietly seething bunch.

Anita is the first to look back at their pursuer.

She stops dead, nearly causing the others to crash into her. Merlin sees her say something to the other three people who had been following her and they all nod eagerly before scramming, being careful not to step on the short train of her exquisitely tailored business skirt.

Eyebrow raised, Antonio watches the lot of them go.

Well, this is an interesting turn of events. What could Antonio possibly want now?

Merlin, ready for a coffee because sod it, it’s been four hours and he needs the caffeine, quickly gathers up the rest of the papers left on their table and makes his way towards the exit, making sure to take the long way so as not to get in the middle of whatever’s going on between the dragon tamer and the dragon lady.

He does his best to ignore the hushed but steadily rising voices of both parties.

When Antonio turns around to leave, he looks aggravated.

Merlin’s not surprised. He’d felt something similar after his ten second run-in with the woman. Anita, on the other hand, looks positively ruffled. Even angry, like Antonio had just told her that her lipstick was the wrong shade of red. Although to be fair, it was.

“Come, Merlo. We’ve won!” He says softly enough that Anita _probably_ can’t hear. “I say we return to the office and celebrate, eh?”

******

 

The little glasses _chink_ when they bring them together before drinking down the clear liquid.

“Best maraschino to be found in northern Italy. Well, maybe not the best. Strong though. Drink up!”

Despite Antonio’s good-natured orders, Merlin sips at his drink, while Antonio downs nearly all of his in one go. Merlin’s nose scrunches in distaste.

Drinking maraschino straight, with nothing added for flavor, seems an odd practice. Fine. To each his own.

“You seem to know signora Tornerà well. Is she a friend of yours?”

Antonio gives Merlin a sheepish look. “In hindsight, I suppose I could have informed you earlier… Anita Tornerà and I, we’re siblings. She’s my sister.”  

Merlin’s brow knits together. “Your… um, what?” 

“Anita, my dear, dear sister.” Antonio shakes his head back and forth solemnly, the effects of the alcohol already apparent. He doesn’t sound like he holds much affection for her. “Didn’t like how I was our father’s favorite. My mother died when I was born – Anita is my half-sister, you see.” 

“Ah.” 

“Same father, different mother. My father’s only desire was to have a lawyer in the family. Money was hard to come by – it always is. And my father in particular wanted at least one of his children to become a lawyer. He got one. But he didn’t anticipate the second.” 

Merlin cocks his head to the side, thoughtful. He nods for him to continue.  

Antonio sighs. “Ani… she was my best friend. We grew up happy enough. Bread on the table and a roof over our heads. My father sent me to law school the minute I was old enough. I was seventeen. Anita was fifteen, and itching to make our father proud with her foster father dead and mother long gone.” He runs a hand through his dark, dark hair, still managing to look exceptionally put-together as he goes on. “I never thought Ani could hurt a fly. But as it turned out, I wasn’t the only shark in the family.” 

Merlin frowns. “She wanted to follow in your footsteps.” 

“Stamp them _out_ , more like. Once she caught the scent of blood, she was done for. Sailed through law school with flying colors, and has excelled ever since. But unlike me, Anita likes to play with her food before swallowing them whole. She’s a nightmare to the opposition on the courtroom floor. Merciless. Today she seemed better than usual, but I’ve seen what she can do.”

He takes another pull from his glass, finishing off the clear liqueur. “I thought I knew her, but now every time I face her in court – which isn’t often, mind you – it feels as though she’s out for my blood.” 

A cold feeling creeps into Merlin’s limbs and settles there. All he can think is one thing. One thing, and that is the feeling that this is _not_ a coincidence. It sounds as though history is _repeating itself._  

He’d had his suspicions when he came to Vogogna. It happened every once in a while, he would feel an inexplicable pull to just _be_ somewhere, like in the park in Austria just before the French Revolution, where he’d met a young English woman with whom he had a brief relationship.

Alice had been very dear to him, a friend first and later a fleeting romance that was never meant to be. After Alice’s parents forced her to move to Belgium to marry someone of a higher class than Merlin, she still sent him letters. She’d fallen in love. For a while, Merlin thought he had, too, even if nothing could ever come of it.

It was four months into their separation, with Merlin still working in residence at a small hospital, when Alice sent a letter informing him of a nightmare she’d had where she was dying and Merlin was there, holding her.

_My Dearest Emerson,_

_I do not mean to disturb you with this letter, but I do not know who else to talk to. You have been, and continue to be a very dear friend, and right now I am very afraid._

_This past night I experienced a terrible dream. A nightmare, in which I lay on the ground by a pond, or perhaps it was a lake. I was dying. I do not know how I know this, but that is how I remember it. I lay on the ground, dying, although I do not remember what caused me to be there and in that condition, but I do remember seeing you._

_You were right there, Mers, you were holding me in your arms. You told me to look at you, and you were smiling. But you were also crying, Mers, and it hurt my heart to see you that way. I felt my last breath leave me, and watched as the world faded away, and that was when I woke up._

_Forgive me for such a strange letter, but I fear if I had told anyone else, they would have locked me away in the madhouse for certain. I needed to tell someone about it, it had me quite rattled. This can just be our little secret, all right Mers?_

_I pray you are doing well. James is giving me headaches, he is intolerable and I hate to marry him. But father wants me to, and mother likes him. I have been frivolous enough for a while, it’s only right that I do good by my family and marry. I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me._

_Love always,_

_Alice_

It wouldn’t have fazed Merlin too much if incidences about dreams like that one hadn’t occurred before.

Many times.

London, in the fourteen hundreds and too many people left on the streets, more of them dead than alive in their homes.

And then there was Fallon, an apprentice to a select group of healers. All of them had taken ill and died, and only Fallon was left to help Merlin as they treated the sick. He was resilient and skilled, even with the little experience he had. Merlin felt as though he’d known him forever.

Then Fallon had had the nightmare, waking up in a cold sweat and turning up the next day to help Merlin with a tremor in his hands. When Merlin had asked what was wrong, the young man only shook his head and told him, “Just stay here. Please don’t leave London.”

Greece in the early eighteenth century, a ten-year-old girl who told him she knew him from somewhere, she was positive she knew him, and she once told him that she was born to be the queen of Greece. Merlin had laughed and played along, until one day she didn’t show up with her mother for tea like they normally did for a weekly visit.

He’d gone to visit little Katerina, but her mother had turned him away, telling him that she had been suffering from night terrors the past three nights. Merlin didn’t need to ask anything after that. He knew what the nightmares were about.

Merlin thinks about Antonio and his family history. He thinks about how comfortable he feels being around Antonio, like it’s second nature to be loyal to him. Like he’s the one person worth being loyal to, when no one else seems worthy enough of loyalty.

It’s just too damn similar to be a coincidence. He learned, long ago, that there was no such thing as coincidences – there just wasn’t.

Antonio, just like Fallon, and Matilda, whom he remembers like he’d only seen them only yesterday, and for gods’ sakes _Aron:_ they were not all that they seemed.

Something else was in them, reaching out, offering solace. A hand to hold just when things seemed to be spiraling – and hell, Merlin had been through his fair share of spiraling. No doubt there would be plenty more of it.

“Antonio, do you think that Anita would ever hurt you? Really hurt you, I mean?”

Antonio jerks back like someone’s slapped him. “My God, absolutely not. She would never – we are talking about _my_ Anita? My sister?”

Merlin grimaces. He knows how it must sound, but if his past experiences are anything to go by, things don’t exactly look good for the lawyer. For either of them, actually.

“I… I know it seems nutters but listen, if you say that Anita has been acting like a completely different person-”

Antonio bristles. “I never said that.”

“You said you feel like you don’t even know her anymore. What’s the difference?”

“Anita would never harm her own brother. She would never wish _harm_ on her _family_ , petty sibling rivalry or no.”

Merlin holds up his hands, palms up, a sign that he doesn’t want conflict any more than Antonio does. “I think you might want to consider the possibility. If Anita is after the title of ‘Best Lawyer in Italy,’ or at the very least Vogogna, I would say you would do well to watch your back.”

“Is that a threat?” Antonio hisses.

Merlin looks heavenward, trying to put it into words without sounding like a complete lunatic. It’s not like he can just tell the man, “oh, did I mention that I’m a sorcerer that happens to be over a thousand years old, and I’m fairly certain that your sister is a vessel for Morgana Pendragon’s spirit and was sent to pave the way for certain doom? Haha, I know. Funny story, right?” Not a chance.

Antonio would look at him like he was bonkers before running to the authorities.

He’d already been dragged to the madhouse once. He promised himself that that would never happen again.

Instead, he says, “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I think that Anita is not all that she seems…” he trails off when he catches the look on Antonio’s face.

“What do you know about her?” says Antonio. Merlin notices that, after just the briefest lapse in self-control, the man has carefully pulled his expression into something more placid, his emotions expertly hidden away behind a lawyer’s mask.

Merlin shakes his head. “Not much, only what I gathered from the trial today. She acted like she knew me, when I was leaving the courtroom while the jury was meeting. She – how do I put this – she seems a little… not _ordinary_.” From the way he says it, the sentence could’ve perfectly well been a form of code, because the words have certainly gauged a reaction.

He knows when he’s being held under intense scrutiny, Merlin can see it in the way Antonio’s shoulders tense, his spine ramrod straight in his beaten up leather chair, eyes narrowing just a fraction, watching Merlin like a dog would watch a rabbit, wondering how close it can get before attacking. Or if it would even be worth attacking in the first place.

“Remind me again, what religion do you practice, Merlo?”

It’s an odd question and an even odder time to be asking it, but Merlin answers, “Not Catholic, if that’s what you were hoping for.”

“Then what? Oh,” he tilts his head lightly, something like pity flashing across his face, “don’t you follow a religion?”

“I mean I _do_ , it’s just… well, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It has to do with being in balance with nature. There’s not really a name for it. It’s an old religion.”

Something about the way Merlin phrases his answer has Antonio’s eyes flying wide open.

“Old Religion?” he murmurs. A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Would you happen to know anything about Druids?”

Merlin gives a start, and quickly looks over his shoulder to make sure no one is lurking in the doorway, listening in. He doesn’t see anyone. Just to be safe, he reaches out a little with a bit of magic, poking and prodding around the entryway and the circumference of the building. No sinister bodies there, magic or mundane. No one can hear their conversation, and thank the gods for that.

“Please sit down, Merlo. Something tells me you know more than you’ve been letting on.”

******

Antonio knows about the Druids.

Or rather, Antonio _knows_ Druids. Personally.

“Not meaning that I my _self_ am one,” he explains quickly, “but I meet plenty of strange people in my line of work. I know you can understand that.”

Merlin inclines his head in Antonio’s direction, assuming the expression of someone who really doesn’t much care one way or the other, and takes his seat across from the lawyer.

“I’m not really one either, but I know a few of them myself” Merlin answers, “it’s hardly strange to me.”

Antonio hums to himself, his brow furrowing. “I defended a Druid man once. He was arrested for trespassing on private property when all he did was take a shortcut through a quieter part of woods. Didn’t want to put up a fuss, you see, but he said that no man or woman can truly claim a piece of the earth. But the old woman who owned that bit of property wouldn’t hear it. I kept the man out of trouble in the end.”

He scratches behind his neck, pensive. “They seem like a very peaceful bunch. While I was working on the Druid’s case I had to do extensive research on their codes and ethical guidelines. It is a lifestyle based on peace and balance. But lately, their code of ethics has been twisted around by younger groups to suit their means, claiming to be Druids when they go around talking of how their kind are the true power. The _only_ power.”

“Sorry, you said ‘their kind.’ What do you mean by that?”

“They are not Druids” Antonio says darkly, nearly at a whisper. He leans forward in his chair and glances around the sunlit room. Clearly, he has the same idea that Merlin had had a few minutes ago. Perhaps someone really _is_ listening in without their knowledge. Merlin does his best to shake the uneasy feeling that he’s being watched.  “They are one extreme on the spectrum of good and bad kinds of power. Their division is power hungry, and they do not follow the Druids’ code of ethics. I haven’t heard anything about anyone ever being harmed by members of the denomination, but I wouldn’t say they’re harmless. My sister is one of them.”

Merlin does a double take. “Anita is a Druid?”

“Some say they are a new division of the Druid people – a newer, younger generation that has been drawing the attention of those who know more about the old ways than they let on. The new Druids, these neo-druids, call themselves _i giudici.”_

The Judges.

Merlin’s heard talk of them, but has yet to meet a member of this new denomination.

“So Anita is a member of _i giudici?_ ”

Antonio shrugs. “Like I said, it’s a new denomination. Not really Druids, just a group of people who’ve taken the name and turned it into something completely different. The only thing they have in common is their belief in natural magic, but they believe in other types of magic besides. Dark magic, for instance. It is, forgive me, a bastardized version of the religion.”

“I’ve heard of them. I don’t agree with their practices if what I’ve heard is true, but I’ve never actually met a member of _i giudici._ ” Merlin crosses his arms and leans back in his seat, thoughtful.

“My sister turned away from the church in favor of the religion of nature, of natural power. If I’m right, she hasn’t been to a Christian mass in years. Not that it would be a bright idea to do so now – she could be excommunicated for heresy. She claimed she fancied herself a bloody _clairvoyant_ when she told me she’d converted to this new faith.”

“And you don’t believe it?” Merlin is careful to phrase the question in a way that doesn’t sound accusatory.

“What, that she converted?”

“That she’s a clairvoyant.”

Antonio fidgets in his seat and shuffles the papers again. And again. Then he sighs, and says, “I do not know _what_ to believe anymore. My sister broke off from our family after a particularly heated argument with our father. He hasn’t seen Anita since their falling out, but I’ve managed to snag a few cases against her in court from time to time over the past few years. Just to keep an eye on her. She’s becoming very good at what she does, I’ll give her that, but all the same… I miss her.” Merlin winces. He can relate.

“This neo-druidism rubbish, these _giudici,_ they’ve taken my only sister from me.”

Merlin hums. He tries to think of where else he’s heard of this group that christened themselves the Judges. He feels like it wasn’t so long ago.

“They believe they have the power to judge for themselves who is worthy of living under the power and might of their old gods and goddesses. They recruit people, too. Those who deny their recruitment… well. We have yet to hear from such a person. Lucky for me, they tend to stay away from Catholics.”

He snorts and reaches for the pot of strong black coffee on the table next to his desk, ignoring the half-empty bottle of maraschino. He’d offered Merlin a cup of the strong coffee that morning before they had to hasten over to the courthouse, and Merlin had accepted it more out of politeness than anything, but the first sip had left the hairs in his nostrils tingling and his tastebuds crying _Uncle!_

He preferred his espresso, and his opinion would not be swayed any time in the near future.

Antonio cracks his knuckles and sighs, flipping through another stack of crisp, untouched papers.

“What else do you know about this new denomination?”

Antonio sets down the papers very deliberately and steeples his fingers, giving Merlin a pointed look.

“Why don’t you tell me? Forgive me again, but you interest me, _Merlo._ What is your real name, may I ask?”

Merlin is stunned, but he schools his features.

Figures. A lawyer who thinks he’s got everyone figured out. Of course he’d seen through the ruse of a pseudonym. _No_ one’s name is Merlo, not even the strangest Italian out there.

“My real name is whatever you want it to be, signor Draconi” Antonio doesn’t miss the switch from informal to formal in one sentence alone. “Not to be rude, but there is no way to phrase this other than, my personal life does not concern you. Here, my name is Merlo.”

“I see.”

“And I can assure you that I am not your enemy, and I would feel quite comfortable to continue working for you, if you’ll have me. Although, I can understand if you no longer trust me. But I promise that I meant no harm when I talked about Anita. It was only out of concern for you. But I can still pack my things-”

“Are you mad?” Antonio sputters, setting down his coffee with more force than intended and sloshing half the contents onto his desk. He catches the mistake too late and grumbles, quickly pulling out his handkerchief to dab at the spill. “This is hand-carved _ash_ ” he laments, voice lowered and not actually aimed at Merlin.

But the stain that’s sure to follow becomes an afterthought when Antonio sets down the coffee-soaked handkerchief and eyes Merlin with the sincerest of interest.

“You are the most intriguing, no-nonsense assistant I’ve had in _years_ ” he laughs. _“_ I have a feeling we’ll get on just fine.”

And get along, they shall.


	8. Possessiveness, Passion, Charisma, and Niviane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting a little bit faster.

He calls the people, the stand-ins of Arthur who aren’t really stand-ins (because really, they’re their own people and have their own lives) – he's taken to calling them his "close friends."

Not _best_ friends – that’s a reserved title. Maybe that's a childish mindset to hold onto, the thought of having best friends, but it's the truth. And as time wears on, Merlin continues to have his suspicions confirmed at some occasion or another; there’s always someone out there with the potential of being his newest “close friend.” Another puzzle piece.

 

Something’s changing.

They keep coming faster. It had started out with one of them coming along every century or so; now it’s more like every decade. He can’t place what it means… although he’s desperately hoping it means _some_ thing. It has to, because this wouldn’t happen without a reason. Right?

Coincidences, or maybe not at all, but whatever the hell ( _who_ ever the hell) these people are, they certainly mean something. At least, he’s getting desperate enough to think that they _should_ mean something. In the grand scheme of things, Merlin’s really just grateful that he’s spending less time alone; It helps, some. It doesn’t completely fill the space, but it helps, and really, there nothing wrong with that.

But then there’s the doubt.

Coincidence. That could be the explanation; at the very least, it’s the most _likely_ explanation, even if he wishes it not to be the case. There’s no denying that there are millions of people in the world, and any stranger off the street could very well be a friendly, well-meaning person with a willingness to chat for hours with someone like Merlin, and yet, not be a part of something bigger. It's almost crippling to think about for too long, to convince himself that this is all just a ruse, or his mind playing tricks on him. He's finally gone bonkers after way too many centuries of not knowing which day would be _the_ day. He wants to know how these people keep finding him, wants to know if they're what he hopes they are. 

Or maybe they're just a godsend in troubling times. Not only is that possible, but it's completely true. But it wouldn't make them the real thing. Not for sure.

Then the optimist in him shouts back, _no no, it’s not just that, is it? It’s not natural for someone to just_ belong _in your life, to just_ fit _. Coincidence? Sod that, these people… they’re closer to you than you think_.

 _But they’re not Arthur_ , says the pessimist.

 _They don’t bloody_ have _to be. For all you know, destiny sent them to you because of Arthur._ The optimist wins that one. He's right - No human was designed to exist alone.

That’s around the time when the pessimist decides to shut up and butt out. At least for a little bit. He’ll convince himself of whatever he wants, if it only means that the voices in his head retreat to leave him in a halfway-there state of peace.

A Druid from the woods could say whatever he liked about anything he pleased, but Merlin, hopeful as he had been, wouldn’t take the words to heart for too long.

 

A hundred years is more than enough to time for the seed of doubt to take root and blossom into something full and ugly and poisonous.

 

**::{}{}{}::**

 

“Good evening, m’am. Erm, Martin Montgomery.” He loathes the name already, even if it's only the first time it's coming out of his mouth. "From Cardiff? I sent a notification of my arrival two weeks ago."

He reminds himself that absolutely anything is better than the name Emerson McMurphy. Inwardly cringing at the recent memory, he asks, “Are you the daughter of MacPen?”

The girl who'd answered the door blushes, making the freckles covering her face and neck stand out stark against skin that errs on the side of pale.

“Oh!” she squeaks once she realizes who Merlin is, and hastily shoves a stray strand of red hair behind her ear. “No, sir, I’m Tilly. Just one of the maids. Master MacPen isn’t here currently, I…” she notices that Merlin looks just a touch frostbitten. “B-but please do come in, master Montgomery.” She motions in a hurry for Merlin to step into the house. “You’re here for the tutoring position, right?”

“I am.”

“Oh. Um, all right, then.”

Tilly, Merlin quickly realizes, doesn’t have much of an affinity towards conversation-making, and the two step back into the foreboding manor in awkward silence. Merlin tugs at one of the lapels of his winter coat and takes off his hat and gloves. He leaves his scarf on. Tilly eyes the scarf but makes no comment on it, only leads him away from the living area and through a set of French doors into the next room, which looks very similar to the first in terms of décor and furniture. Subdued colors, vases older than the British Empire, a sofa and plush seats covered in velvet, closed curtains, and a fireplace with a lit fire and spotless mantle top.

Whatever the reason had been for the undeniable tug he’d felt to come to the grandest manor in Arrochar, Scotland, two miles from Loch Lomond on the coldest bloody day of January, 1882, Merlin hasn’t the faintest. But here he is. Isn't this just peachy.

He already knows it isn’t because of Tilly; He would know if Tilly was one of “them.” Merlin turns his head around to take everything in as they walk on, looking around in the hopes of seeing someone else and finally realizing why he’s here, and not out and about in the world helping as many people as he can in the form of a doctor or a lawyer, or the co-manager of an orphanage, or a professor.

The maid who answered the door is very young, probably fifteen or sixteen, anxious and quiet but by no means shy. She doesn’t hide the way she glances at Merlin from time to time, eyeing the scarf, then the rest of his clothes, obviously sizing him up to see if he’ll last a day against whatever child they have waiting for him to tutor. After the fifth time that Merlin catches her staring, he says something.

"Is something the matter?" he asks, keeping his tone light. He doesn't want Tilly to startle.

"What? Oh!" She stops for a moment, looking only a trifle flustered. "No, of course not. You just weren't what I was expecting from a maths and English tutor."

Merlin raises an eyebrow. "What were you expecting?"

Tilly cracks a small smile. "I had thought you'd be older."

"You'd be surprised how many times I've heard that, actually."

"Oh?"

Merlin nods. Tilly accepts the answer as passable, and turns to take the lead again.

She ushers Merlin through the MacPen household – a monster of a place but tastefully furnished with the best that France, England, and possibly the royal family of the entire Ottoman Empire, have to offer, it’s just that expensive-looking. Merlin makes a mental note not to touch _any_ thing.

They pass through the tea room – or possibly _a_ tea room, since there certainly must be more than one in a house so big – and he follows Tilly past the kitchen area, where delicious smells waft through the closed door. Merlin pushes aside the thought that he hasn’t eaten in hours.

They make their way up the staircase, which spirals up for three stories before ending. Tilly and Merlin stop on the second floor and take a left, walking down the carpeted hallway until they reach the last door.

"And here is Archie's room." Tilly knocks on the door of what must be the child's bedroom. "Archie? There's someone here to meet you."

The door cracks open, and a small child peeks out from behind, rubbing his eyes. He must be a heavy sleeper if he;s only just woken up, it's already midday.

"Archie, have you cleaned your room yet?"

The boy, Archie, shakes his head. Then he points at Merlin like he holds the answers to all of Tilly's questions. " _He_ can do it for me. Can't you?"

"Um..." Merlin turns to Tilly, wondering if maybe this is a joke.

“You have to clean my room now. Mum will be cross if it’s not clean in time for tea.” The boy sounds dead serious.

“Uh," Merlin's mouth falls open, staring at Archie like the little boy is of another world. "Excuse me?” Surely this child hasn't been raised to act like this much of a prat?

“ _And_ make me tea, because Frau Hodel's taken the day off.”

“Frau Hodel quit yesterday because you threw a tea cozy in her face," Tilly interjects, "Don’t you go scaring of master Montgomery as well, you need a tutor more than you need a governess" She glares daggers at the boy while she continues to scold over Merlin's shoulder. She's much shorter than he is, but also much more imposing when she starts to raise her voice. "For goodness’s sakes, Archie, you’re twelve years old. And making tea and cleaning the room is not part of this man’s job. Shame on you.”

Her scolding appears to be working for Archie, because the boy looks humbled, if only marginally so. At least he’s not glaring at Merlin to go make him beans on toast. “Go bother Sarni about tea if you really must eat _now._ ”

Once she's finshed her her tirade, Tilly throws a chastising scowl in Archie’ direction, until the boy seems to shrink under the stare.

Merlin stares at the young woman in newfound awe. A few choice words and she's tamed the beast.

“Come, Martin, I’ll show you to your wing.”

Merlin splutters. “I have my own _wing?”_ he asks incredulously.

Tilly nods, beckoning for Merlin to follow her away from Archie’s bedroom. “Come on, follow me. Archie can entertain himself for an hour or so. Lord knows you’ll be needing the time to prepare yourself. He’s a handful, he is.”

“I can see” mutters Merlin, shouldering one of his bags.

“I do feel rather bad for suggesting Sarni though, she really has enough on her plate to deal with as it is, but that  is _really_ not your job, I can’t believe he told you to do that.”

“Sorry, who’s Sarni?”

“She’s the Head Maid. Wonderful woman. You’ll get to meet her soon, but first, let’s get your things upstairs.”

******

Merlin takes in a deep breath for what must be the eighth time today.

“Archie, I don’t cook for you. _Or_ clean your room, is that clear?”

“Well today you _do_.” Archie MacPen is a force of nature and Merlin would be damned if anyone said otherwise.

“Well then read me a book. Please?” Hypnotizing, brown, twelve-year-old eyes stare into his soul, and Merlin almost gives in. Almost.

“We can read a book later, when it’s time for your English lesson. But first, numbers.”

Archie slumps. “But numbers are no fun. Pleease, I want to read a book!”

“No numbers, no book.”

“But-”

Merlin holds up a hand, and whether it be Merlin’s years of practicing his stink eye, or the fact that no one has ever interrupted an oncoming tantrum save Tilly, Archie backs down under the positively withering look.

“Fine. Numbers. But we’re reading afterwards” Archie mumbles, staring at the toes of his shoes. Merlin’s mouth quirks up, pleased. 

“And then you’re going to help me tidy up my room before father gets home.”

 _Incredible_ , Merlin thinks. “Archie…” he warns.

“Or I could just ask Sarni, and you _know_ how busy she is.”

Merlin wonders if this is how it's going to be from now on.

******

He’s had it. It’s been three years, and he’s really had it with this kid. Fifteen years old boys really are incorrigible.

Archie, for the first time in a while – a while being five whole weeks – has broken down into another tantrum. It had started out like any other day, and then Merlin had walked into the boy’s bedroom. As usual, it had been a mess, but this time, Archie had asked Merlin for only the second time in his life if he would _please_ tidy the room for him, because Sarni had taken the weekend off.

Merlin bites his lips before he shouts. He’s never been told to clean someone’s room since… he really doesn’t know. But he only got four hours of sleep because he'd been filling out paperwork, and he'd woken too late for breakfast, and now he really isn't in the mood to deal with this.

"Martin, mother and father get  _so_ cross when my room isn't clean, and I'll never be able to finish cleaning up in time." He makes a compelling argument. Merlin nearly falls for it. But then Archie has the gall to add, "and then you can make us some dinner, yeah?" Oh, good grief.

"For the last time  _no,_ Archie." His temper's wearing thin and the anger he's been doing his best to quell now flares up, and he's tempted to shout.

"You're acting so... so  _oncompetent,_ Martin!"

"It's  _in_ competent, and I'm so glad that our English lessons have been paying off."

"It's whatever I say it is! You really are useless, aren't you?"

 

Merlin does not shout. He has never once shouted at Archie, and he will not start now.

 

He does something else.

He lets his magic act of its own accord; suddenly the blankets are folding themselves into perfect squares, pillows are being fluffed by invisible hands, toys are swept up off the carpet by nothing at all and they fly into the toy chest. Books right themselves on the bookshelf, and the bed makes itself even more pristinely than a military-trained officer ever could.

In less than ten seconds, the bedroom is spotless, and Merlin's frustration has tapered.

He knows he’s done it now.

There will be no playing that off as a simple sleight-of-hand magic trick. He just made the bloody _books move_ on their own, not to mention almost every other stationary object in the room. But for some reason, he doesn’t care. Because it’s Archie.

Archie, who is standing in the middle of the room, gaping, still in his pyjamas but suddenly wide awake.

“What was that…?”

“Archie, I can explain-” Merlin palms a hand to his forehead. That was stupid, but he can't take it back.

“That… that was amazing. Could you do it again?”

A fleeting moment of fear for having revealed himself so rashly passes through Merlin, before he stops and thinks about the situation.

Archie is fifteen. He's young and audacious, but if there's one thing he doesn't do, it's blackmail. He'll threaten, but he'll never carry through. Even if he did tell someone about Merlin, no one would believe him.

And then, there's always the memory spell to fall back on. But he hopes it doesn't come to that.

For other reasons he can’t fathom at the moment, Merlin feels a complete, indubitable trust for Archie, because… because why?

He looks from the floor, to the well-made bed, to the bookshelf, and then to the boy.

Archie can barely seem to keep himself still, shuffling from foot to foot, combing a hand through his hair as if that might help the situation he's got going on up there. He’s waiting for Merlin to do something else; There is no guile in his eyes. Only admiration.

Merlin knows that Archie would never betray his secret.

“Sure,” Merlin says, not entirely sure what he’s doing. But a sly look crosses his face. “I’ll do it again… but first, arithmetic.”

******

“Oh my god” Merlin croaks, nearly dropping his tea.

“Is something the matter, Martin?”

“No, no” Merlin sets down the fragile china teacup onto the saucer and looks down, the realization dawning on him. He stands up from the wobbly kitchen chair, reeling. How could he not have seen it the second he stepped through the door?

Archie is _one of them._

He smiles reassuringly, sitting back down before Tilly has a heart attack. “Absolutely nothing is the matter.”

******

For reasons unknown to anyone but Merlin, he remains the tutor of the MacPen household until the eve of Archie’s eighteenth birthday.

Even though the boy is freckled and pale, with straight, sandy hair spiking behind his ears and a nose that’s a little on the short side, he still resembles a certain man from Camelot with absurd closeness in regards to charisma, as well as his habit of becoming a bit too possessive over things.

He calls Merlin a right prat when he doesn’t have his way, and likes to get him into trouble even on the best of days. And better still, he’s just one of those children who genuinely does not give two shites. About anything.

Perhaps it’s inaccurate to say _anything._ He cares very much about _things_. Things that belong to him – mostly his books and his clothes, but sometimes, it’s people.

Things and people. _Merlin_ , for instance.

Archie has become rather _possessive_ of Merlin as his tutor, and he’s been spending the last hour insisting on the fact that he absolutely and without question will refuse to let his beloved tutor leave him.

“But you’re _my_ friend!” he shouts. Tilly had left the room the minute after she delivered the news of Merlin’s resignation, and not a minute later Merlin himself had walked in, unaware that Archie already knew his plans to leave.

His face had been crestfallen, so saddened when ‘Martin’ showed up to his room with a stack of books in hand.

Merlin knows when he’s been found out. With a sigh, he steels himself for the tirade.

But it’s not a tirade he’s in for; just tears.

“Please, I’ll beg my mother to pay you double your income – triple! – if that’s what you want” Archie pleads. “I don’t know what that would be…” he purses his lips in full concentration as if he’s trying to do the arithmetic, but ultimately decides it’s not important. “But whatever it is, you’ll have it. I promise!” His jaw is set, shoulders tensed and unwilling to fall. “Please, stay?”

“Archie, you know I can’t.” Merlin sets down the stack of books on the bedside table. Most of them are English, a few are maths, and one is a novel. Archie looks closer at the title. It’s a play, actually. _Othello._ Archie loved Shakespeare. And now his tutor is leaving him a parting gift.

“No, no I don’t… Please, Martin, I can’t stand the idea of another child having you as their tutor. They don’t know you and they never will! They don’t know about… about what you can do.”

Merlin sets his jaw. Only in the knowledge that they’re completely alone would Archie ever talk about Merlin’s… abilities.

“You’re nearly of age,” he answers, wishing it wouldn’t sound so harsh when he says, “I can’t stay anymore, you have your own life to lead, and you don’t need me to teach you anymore. You must discover what it is to be grown up, and you must do it on your own. This sort of thing can’t be taught by me. Especially me.” He sees that Archie doesn’t so much as blink. “Archie _please_ , don’t be angry with me.” He doesn’t want to leave yet another piece of his heart scattered in another part of the world for someone to snatch up.

“I’ll be angry if I _want_ to be angry” the boy pouts, and it’s like he’s twelve years old all over again. His lips purse in distress and he barely contains a sniffle.

“Archie…” Merlin wants to comfort him. He does. But it would only make his leaving worse.

“No. You’re not going.”

“You don’t need me anymore” Merlin repeats, quieter, but Archie shakes his head violently, before he says something that makes Merlin freeze.

“But I do, Martin. Because…” And then he’s hearing the dreaded words that he’s heard more than a few times, always from the person who doesn’t quite fit the one he’d like it to be.

“I never got to have a friend like you before.” Because there will never be anyone quite like Merlin. That’s what all of them say, in some form or other.

"I’ve never had a brother before. You’re as close as it gets. I don’t care about the magic, I just want you to stay... I _need_ you to stay." Oh.

"I wouldn’t wish for anyone else to be here.” And when the words fall, a silence follows. The house feels even more enormous that usual - an understatement, seeing as the house is already monstrous. The bookshelves and dark green walls of the library feel like they're pushing inward. The plush armchairs, always the coziest spots for a nap on a sunny summer day, sit still as statues, more foreboding than a circle of army men just waiting for the action to hit.

“Please, don’t go.” Archie's tensed shoulders slump and the look in his eyes is too soft, too broken, for Merlin to be anything other than utterly gutted.

If he’s expecting to hear something worse, he never does. If anything, Archie’s confession seals the deal.

He has to go, and he will not come back again. Not for birthdays, not for Christmas dinners. Not when the nightmares start. And not when the letters come rolling in. Not ever. He’ll never be able to explain the pull of another place, of another person waiting for him. And it’s possible he never will, but he can’t ignore the pull, either.

There are others out there, and Archie’s had Merlin in his life for longer than any of the others ever even had a chance at. Six years. Six whole years.

“I have to move on, Archie. You’re grown up and I don’t need to stay. Your mother and father have already agreed. Remaining here isn’t a choice for me any longer.”

“What about my choice?”

It’s a fair question.

“Archie, no matter what I do, I will not be like everyone else. I’m older than the oldest people you know. I’ve lived through things you can’t know and that I won’t tell you about, because that wouldn’t be fair to you. Just like staying here wouldn’t be fair to a lot of other people. You have to let me go, Archie.”

“And if I don’t?”

Merlin looks down. When he looks back up, Archie has pulled a brave face.

“I suppose that’s your choice, then.”

******

Before he leaves, Merlin whispers a few carefully chosen words under his breath as he dons his top hat and walks out into the rain, bags in tow and Tilly on his heels, waving him goodbye. It’s too late in the night for Archie to still be awake, but Merlin knows that he’s not only awake, but looking out his bedroom window, angrily refusing to say his goodbyes face to face. Heart breaking all over again, Merlin thanks Tilly one last time and accepts the rest of his bags to be loaded into the carriage.

Guilt tugs at his heartstrings when he steps into the carriage waiting for him, grey as the cobblestones and coated in raindrops. But he tells himself that he did the right thing.

 

When Archie wakes it’s to a grey, rainy Scottish morning, and he’s confused to find that his cheeks are wet, as is his pillow. Why had he been crying last night?

He can’t remember having any reason for feeling so sad that he would cry in his sleep. The only thing that might have made him upset was the parting of his old tutor just last night.

Martin Montgomery had been a dull old man, with a thick, grizzly beard and joyless eyes. A permanent scowl and a droning voice when he taught maths. But he'd been kind enough. That’s all Archie remembers about him, to be honest. But at the same time he feels like the memory isn’t his.

He can't help but think he's forgetting something.

 

**::{}{}{}::**

 

He doesn’t know who the woman is at first, but she sure doesn’t look happy to see him.

They stand only a few yards apart, staring each other down. The grass at their feet is soaked from last night's rainfall, and Merlin's shoes are muddied from walking through the forest from the tiny Welsh village.

“You’re Emrys” the woman says. It's clear from her eyes that she recognizes him, and isn't too sure how she feels about it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It’s a weak lie. So weak, he doesn’t know why he said it in the first place; the woman obviously knows him.

“You killed my mother.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” Another lie. It’s clear as day _who_ this woman is. She even wears the same shade of lip-red that her mother wore over a thousand years ago. He wonders how old this woman is, how she’s still alive just as much as he is.

Merlin didn’t even know Nimueh _had_ a daughter.

“My name is Niviane. Nimueh was my mother. And _you…”_ she points a finger at Merlin with a snarl, “you killed her.”

She doesn’t have as much magic as Nimueh, Merlin sees he could easily outdo her if it ever came to showing off their magical prowess. But Niviane holds other powers.

Her snarl becomes a less severe frown, and her brow pinches in concentration while her eyes glaze over for the briefest of moments. Ah.

So Niviane is a Seer. And most likely a powerful one.

Her eyes clear just like that, and a serene look takes the place of the angry one. “Finally, destiny has presented the great and mighty Emrys to me, all wrapped up for me like a Christmas gift.” The look in her eyes tells Merlin that she’s talking about the part where you rip off the wrapping and throw it away, then dump out the contents to see what’s inside. That’s certainly what it seems like the woman wants to do to him. “I have seen horrible tragedy awaiting you, Emrys.” She smiles, calm. Her red lips contrast with the white of her teeth. The trees around them, in the densest part of the woods, rustle their branches in the wind.

Merlin snorts, and regrets it immediately, because all he’s done is make the woman – Niviane – angrier. Honestly though, could she have said anything more obvious?

“And here I was thinking I’ve had it so easy” Merlin retorts.

“I see horrible tragedies taking place. A Great War. And another. And a few more in between. Thousands will die. And Arthur will not come.” She says nothing of the aftermath, only that even when the wars are raging their bloodiest, "Arthur still will not come.” Merlin’s blood runs cold. She has to be lying.

But she’s a Seer. If anything, this only hammers the idea into Merlin’s head that maybe, just maybe, the Druid had been lying to him. To give him false hopes, to keep him alive until he was needed for something big. Until he was needed for something terrible.

And it was true, Merlin had had dark streaks. He’d been ruthless, at times. Terrible. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of. He’d fallen, he’d hit rock bottom, and he’d lost his way.

And he’d killed. Not many, but he _had_ killed. Lord Agravaine and Cornelius Sigan, Morgana, the band of sorcerers in the 1200s who sold him as a slave to a Persian lord, the Pagan Priest who had kidnapped his friend for a blood ritual, a few other sorcerers of questionable morality, and in the last few cases, Merlin had been acting out of revenge, however hot-blooded and in the moment.

It was a weight he would never be able to get rid of.

Niviane, filled with rage to see her mother’s killer standing before her but also delighted for having him at her mercy, raises her arms to the heavens and begins to chant. Merlin raises an arm to block out the wind.

She’s calling upon her mother’s spirit. The ancient language still feels like second nature on Merlin’s tongue. He rarely uses spells, but that part of him has been ingrained so deeply that he could never forget it. He doesn’t doubt that Niviane means for Nimueh to send down her own power to aid her in whatever she has planned.

Emrys will not escape them this time.

Merlin raises his hands, prepared to fight back, and his eyes flash gold.

The Seer grins wickedly and plants her feet firmly – well, as firmly as she can in impossibly high-heeled shoes – into the ground. Her fashion sense might be impractical, but her power is strong. Perhaps she _does_ stand a chance.

The battle between pure magic and tainted magic goes on for what might have been hours.

Magic tears at tree branches and lifts up a layer of dirt more than half a mile wide before Merlin, worn out, finally succumbs.

Niviane throws her head back and laughs.

“Are you sure that you are Emrys?” she taunts. “ _The_ Emrys? What a shame. I expected so. Much. _Better_.”

The words are reminiscent of the first magical battle Merlin remembers waging against another sorcerer, and that sorcerer (or rather, sorceress) had been none other than Nimueh. She had a nasty habit of teasing before she took her kill shot.

Niviane is no High Priestess, but given her relation to one, it seems that Merlin has underestimated her powers. But then she does something very strange.

She doesn’t kill him.

Panting and on his knees in the dirt, winded and weakened, Merlin looks up, confused. “What, have you finally come to your senses and seen that revenge is not the answer?” he gasps out. Niviane cackles, although she sounds a little breathless herself. She’s sustained a blow of pure energy to her left shoulder, and the way she holds herself says as much.

“Oh, you think yourself so _good_ , Emrys, but you are a hypocrite. Did you not kill Nimueh? Did you not kill Sigan? Morgana? You can say you didn’t enjoy killing, but I _know_ you. I know your heart.” She leers at him. Merlin struggles to his feet and faces her again. “You enjoyed killing my mother” the sorceress continues. “You were more than happy to see her gone!”

The air crackles with electricity mixed with spiteful magic. “You will remember me, Emrys, and you will spend decades here in these woods. You will be killed when it is your time, and I pray that time comes soon. In honor of my mother, I hope that your death is a painful one.”

Then her eyes flash red, and Merlin is flung back against a tree. He can’t move.

Pressing with her magic and her mother’s, Niviane forces Merlin deeper into the tree, and he cries out when the bark takes hold of him, crawling over his skin and sticking to him like pitch.

The hollow of the tree welcomes him in, wrapping him into the bark so tightly he doesn’t think it will ever let him go. Bright red berries hanging from the tree's leaves glisten with such a stomach-churning shade of red that there's no doubt of their poisonous quality. The hawthorn wants him as its prisoner.

His magic, while powerful, feels off and _wrong_ against the power of two sorceresses who have been preparing for this moment their entire lives. What wasted lives.

He shuts his eyes, losing touch with the world as each second goes by and the dark magic plunges him into unconsciousness. With a final twist of her wrist, the sorceress puts the great and mighty Emrys to sleep.

  

 **::{}{}{}::**  

Thirty years pass in a whisper, and Merlin, trapped and alone, finally stops hearing the voices that have plagued him in his head for so long.

In fact, he stops hearing anything at all.

In some ways, Merlin wants to thank Niviane. He’s finally getting more decent sleep than he’s had in a long time. No nightmares, no nothing. Just blank thoughts.

 

It’s not until some poor sod happens upon Merlin’s tree, looking for something to cut down for god knows what, maybe for a new house or wood for the fireplace, that Merlin wakes up.

It’s the hacking from a very, very sharp axe that does it.

 

Merlin tells himself that not all lumberjacks are bad.

This one had just been clueless, that was all, and he really hadn’t seemed like such a terrible bloke. Really, who would have assumed that when they went to cut down a tree there would be a man _stuck inside of it?_ Sure, he’d accidentally hacked a pretty nasty gash into Merlin’s side and broken a rib or two, but he’d also offered to take him back his home to be treated by a doctor.

Merlin, wanting nothing more than a nice, hot bath and to know what year it was, had politely declined, or as politely as he could while grimacing from the pain in his side, leaving a very confused and guilty lumberjack in the middle of the woods while Merlin sustained himself with enough magic to get him to the edge of the woods without collapsing. Even if he’d lost every drop of blood in his body, he knew that his magic would never let him die. The sun had just been coming up when he made it to the edge, where he’d promptly collapsed on the ground, bloody and exhausted.

From there, he’d traveled by foot to the nearest village – which had been ten miles away, blast it all - and discovered that it was 1915, and lo and behold, there was a war on.

He takes the first train to Haworth, England, and makes up his mind immediately to enlist as an army physician the first chance he gets.

The sorceress Niviane had been right. The war was a bloody one. 

 

 **::{}{}{}::**  

He’s exhausted.

The war – the “Great War” –  has only been officially over for three years, and he’s seen enough bullet wounds and gas-affected soldiers to last him a lifetime. Multiple lifetimes, probably. It looks as though a tornado ripped through the city. Shell-shocked men returning from the war put on their brave faces, because at least they survived, and at least they have families to return home to.

And Merlin? Merlin has no one. He has himself, and he has his nightmares.

So much death. So much pointless violence. So many pointless new inventions to take the enemy down in mere seconds. So many pointless inventions that were used to drive people to insanity or near enough, with poisonous gas and starvation and battles fought from muddy trenches that filled a man’s boots with water and bacteria that made the body rot in the most horrible ways.

Against a promise he’d made to himself some decades back, Merlin moves to Paris.

 

The 1920s bring glamour unlike anything he’s ever seen. He wonders at how much he’s missed over the last forty years.

Aside from the beginning of the Great War… not much, it seems. But now that he’s back, the world seems to be in full swing. In went and hurried itself along, waiting for no one. Merlin’s just glad that he made it in time to see it all happen. And in some ways, not so glad. With the worst of it over with for now, Paris sparkles at night like a dream world, beautiful and ghostly and bright, doing its best to illuminate only the good, while telling the tourist folk that nothing bad lurks here, that they should forget about war and death and the evil that sits ever present on the rooftops and in the alleyways.

The glamour is only there on the surface. Just like the luxury and posh lifestyles of the wealthy people living their lives in the 1700s, or the 1800s, the glitz and glamour of the twentieth century is only skin-deep. _Posh_ means a nice dress and swinging music, strings of pearls and art painted by up-and-coming unknowns. It means party after party after endless party, because that’s all life is; it’s all just one big party. All while those left over from when the war was in full swing eke out a living in crummy flats and beg on street corners.

Merlin remembers walking the streets of London after the war ended. He shivers at the thought.

It’s not often that he can look into another’s eyes and see the same amount of pain that he feels like he’s been carrying all these centuries, but then he’d seen the eyes of the people of London after the war, and he suddenly understood what a blow this war had been to the people of England. To much of the world, actually.

The Crusades had been bad. The Plague had been bad. But the Great War had been no less horrible. Death was death, and death in all its forms could scare even the most stoic of them all.

 

Paris is beautiful, but just like any other city, it has its monsters.

The gash in Merlin’s side had healed in the span of about a week after being woken in the tree, but there’s still a scar, and he knows it will remain there.

He could always get rid of it with magic, but something in Merlin makes him keep it. Battle scars should be worn with pride. All it is is proof that neither Niviane nor her mother could get rid of him _that_ easily. Waking up in a tree sure had hurt like a son of a bitch, but it hadn’t killed him, surprise surprise.

He isn’t in Paris for the reason he normally finds himself in various places.

 

He hadn’t felt a pull this time.

He’d just felt hollow. About as hollow as the tree he’d been shoved into.

He needed to get away from London. He’d treated hundreds of people during the war, and then hundreds more after that. And then something terrifying happened: he’d felt himself stop _feeling._

If there was one thing that frightened him more than losing someone dear to him, it was losing his sense of _being_. Empathy and compassion were necessary to life. As a physician a hundred times over, Merlin knew this better than anyone.

But that moment when he’d felt everything go numb, that was when he knew he needed to take a break. He needed something mindless.

So he moves to Paris, and he listens to all the music he can, even if he hates it, and he goes to the parties and _soirees,_ and he has a roaring time, and then when he climbs out of the stupor after about a year of _not_ thinking and _not_ feeling; he pulls himself together, and finds himself something to do.

In Paris, he goes about his days living out the cliché of a recluse artist, dwelling in a second-floor studio apartment at the heart of Montmartre in the _18e_ _arrondissment,_ with plumbing that couldn’t be fixed with anything other than magic and a leak in the ceiling that really gave the place character, as well as mold.

In reality, he doesn’t do much art while in Paris. The Renaissance was more the time when he really got into that sort of thing. The art forms back then were more his style. He’s still got the paintings and sketchbooks stashed away somewhere, all packed up in boxes with sheets over them. One day when he settles down – _if_ he settles down – he’ll hang those paintings up. Hell, he’ll get a place with a room big enough that he can have his very own art gallery. Wouldn’t that be nice.

But for now he doesn’t paint. He’ll go sit on the curbside with a good view of the portrait artists, and he’ll sketch something for himself to capture the moment while the paperboys pass by on their rounds and stuffy old men smoke their thick-smelling cigarettes, playing _boules_ and cracking jokes about their wives, who probably deserve better anyway.

Mostly, though, Merlin writes. He’d picked up journaling then and again, on and off ever since his Camelot days. It helps with the nerves and his darker moods. Now, he journals constantly.

He only carries two journals around with him; the first is bloody ancient and bound in leather, well-kept but worn from the years.

That one carries in it Merlin’s life in Camelot, his life alongside Arthur, and the most painful losses he’d ever borne witness to. The volume is thick, nearly a thousand pages, and it’s as much as he could put on paper before running out of things to say.

The second journal, not quite as thick but also bound in leather of a newer quality, holds the story of the rest of his ongoing life. With a simple – maybe a little tricky, actually – charm, he’d enchanted the volume to never run out of room. With just a push from his thoughts, he can flip through the pages to any point in his life and read about it. Journaling’s become a nightly ritual, a practice to help him wind down before going to bed.

It feels amazing to get things out on paper.

Paris is nice in some regards. He’d really rather there was less smoking, though.

******

1927 brings Merlin to the States. It also brings Thierry Chevalier.

Thierry is curly-haired and thin-faced, with dark skin and nimble hands that fly over the piano, perfecting chords and scales and tapping his foot against the pedal whenever he fancies.

The young man, seventeen and with very little memory of the war, moved from Saudi Arabia to France when he was less than a year old.

“In 1920 my mother and I traveled overseas to Brooklyn, after my father was killed. We don’t know why anyone would kill him, but that’s what happened. My father was French, he studied under one of the great French composers. Never said which one… but he taught me to play.” Thierry gestures at the piano next to him.

He and Merlin sit in the small but clean sitting room of the three-room flat in Brooklyn, while Thierry’s mother, Madame Chevalier, busies herself in the little kitchen, making tea. The smell of homemade bread fills the flat, giving it the feeling of _home._ And Merlin does feel at home.

Merlin had met Thierry when he was called in to visit them in their flat, when he was working as a doctor taking house calls. Most doctors operated like that, going from home to home whenever someone was needed.

It’s not the same as working in a hospital under high-stress conditions, but the individuality of house calls is more appealing in its own way. He can look after the patient how _he_ thinks he should be looking after the patient. With a few hundred years of experience under his belt, he’s normally right.

Madame Chevalier had been very, very ill when Merlin was called in. Influenza. Thierry had been so afraid she might not make it.

That had been two months ago. Now fully recovered and back to her own, robust self, Madame Chevalier just can’t get enough of Merlin.

Delighted to find that Merlin is fluent in French _and_ Arabic, she invites him for tea every week, and in that time Merlin’s gotten to know Madame Chevalier and her musically inclined son very well. It also makes up for the fact that he’s living in the States.

Merlin watches Thierry glance at the piano keys, thinking that he had also learned to play the piano. First it had been harpsichord, in Vienna when he was passing through (although instruments have really progressed since then). Merlin also played the viola for a few years, and he still picks it up every once in a while, but the piano was the instrument that really called to him.

He’d loved going to concerts and salons, back in the days of Schubert and Liszt, and farther back to Haydn, Mozart, even Bach, although he never did get to see Bach perform. Merlin still loves a good concert. The selection of instruments in the ensembles these days are wonderfully varied and filled with glorious sonorities, strings pulling at his own heart and brass filling up his lungs and brain with triumphant sound. Music is another kind of magic.

He makes passing jokes about how Schubert loved a good party, although he didn’t go about his partying very wisely (“There’s a reason so many more people died so young. Syphilis is a bastard”). And how Liszt was ridiculously full of himself, especially in the looks department (“Did you know he preferred to have the pianos for his performances turned sideways, just so that people could get a better look at his profile?” “No. That sounds ridiculous, did he really?” “It’s true!”). Liszt had been anything but attractive, but for some inexplicable reason his looks were something he prided himself highly on. His narcissism was his key feature - until Merlin witnessed the man sitting down to play in a concert hall in Milan. That was when Merlin decided he wanted to learn the piano.

The harpsichord was so fifty years ago, anyway.

And Thierry, well, he grins and laughs along when Merlin tells him just that, not realizing that Merlin is speaking from memory, not imagination.

“Sounds as if you knew them personally, Martin.” He pronounces Merlin’s pseudonym with much more grace than any American ever could. “I want to be a composer. Have you ever heard of Aaron Copland?”

“Can’t say I have, sorry.”

“Well, he’s a genius. His music?” Thierry sighs with something like longing, staring into the distance as though he’s hearing the music in real time. “ _Brio._ I _love_ him. I want to write like he writes. And Mozart, I like him too but, _everyone_ likes Mozart. He was a mischievous bastard but he’s truly excellent.” Merlin snorts. It’s true.

Thierry laughs to himself, in the way only an impassioned lover of music can laugh at his own music jokes. “Oh, and have you heard Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ sonata?”

Merlin shakes his head no, although he’s not entirely sure. Maybe he has. He’s never been great at remembering the names of different pieces of music, save the most famous ones like Handel’s _Messiah_ or Mozart’s _Requiem._

“Ahh, you _have_ to hear it. The _allegretto_ movement is my favorite. May I…?” He motions towards the piano, and Merlin quickly nods for Thierry to sit down at the piano bench.

The boy lowers himself onto the bench and gets situated before taking a long, deep breath, exhaling slowly, his hands lifting in the classic pianist move that says, _get ready, this is going to be good_. Then he noiselessly lets his hands fall, and all at once his fingers are flying over the ivories like a well-oiled machine, fluid and graceful and not missing a beat.

The tune is beautiful, a minor key with a driven tempo, falling somewhere within the Romantic era. The endless runs, arpeggios, and striking octaves never seem to stop. It’s just constant motion. Merlin stares.

He recognizes the piece about five seconds in, remembering a performance of it from a long time ago. Perhaps in a salon some time in the late eighteenth century, during a private social gathering. He thinks Henri Ravel might have been in attendance, but he can’t for the life of him remember. He’s rubbed shoulders with celebrities often enough that it doesn’t faze him so much anymore.

Somehow, he always finds himself being invited places- he knew people. He always _knows_ people. He makes connections, that’s for sure. Just not exceedingly personal ones.

He doesn’t allow that sort of thing anymore, or at least that’s what he keeps demanding of himself. But now, watching Thierry, the feeling of needing some sort of human companionship returns. It’s only human to need a friend every once in a while.

The last time he felt he had any real friends was just before the Great War, but one person in particular, the person he’d trusted with his life… gone.

Died of blood loss after some wayward shrapnel caught him in the thigh, severing the femoral artery. It hadn’t been as quick a death as he’d deserved. He hadn’t deserved death _at all_ , but at least the rest of the men in his troop had reached safety before anyone else was lost.

Merlin swallows, forcing the memory back before it becomes too much. Listening to the music helps him focus on the present, effectively grounding him and easing the tension in his shoulders.

The performance back in the Viennese salon had been good, but Thierry’s performance is better.

The way the boy leans forward to dig into his _sforzandos_ , the passion behind the fingertips when the trills begin, and then, rather subtly, the piece modulates down, and the sound as a whole becomes darker, all the little technical things melt into the raw artistry of the performance and lend themselves to pure, dazzling beauty. Thierry’s no virtuoso, but he’s talented. He’s an artist.

Thierry’s face is set in deep concentration, totally immersed in the music. Merlin watches with breathless wonder and decides that this, yes, _this_ is what Thierry was born to do. He was made for music, and the music for him.

Then the piece ends, and Thierry lifts his hands with a dramatic sweep to show his one-person audience that it’s over. When Merlin starts to clap, Thierry beams like the sun.

“Are you boys ready for supper?” Madame Chevalier chirps from the kitchen.

“ _Oui maman!”_ Thierry calls back, although in such a small flat, it’s really not necessary. Merlin loves it. It’s homey. Suppers at the Chevalier household are the one thing he looks forward to all week.

******

It doesn’t hit him until after he returns to his own flat in Greenpoint that Thierry, dark-haired, musically gifted Thierry, is another one of them.

Arthur’s sent him another one.

Merlin drops the key to his flat into the tin of change on his second-hand coffee table, and his shoulders sag with the relief. _Thank gods._ He had begun to think he was alone again.

“Christ, thank you” he sighs, closing his eyes for a moment before heading into the tiny kitchen to fix himself some supper.

But too quickly his thoughts turn dark again, clouding over with Niviane’s words and bad memories. He hurries to make himself busy, grabbing spices off the windowsill with the paint chipped off, rummaging through the pantry, sorting through jars until he finds what he needs, and just trying to keep his thoughts distracted in general.

He puts the kettle on, and nearly burns his hand when his thoughts begin to distract him. He hisses and brings his hand up, before going to run it under the tap. “Shite” he swears under his breath. He doesn’t want to wake the neighbors again.

Once he has the water boiling in a pot on the stove and more in a kettle warming for tea, he gives up with a huff and sits down in the only chair at the kitchen table, running a hand through his hair. “Just hurry it up, will you?”

 

**::{}{}{}::**

When the Depression hit, it hit hard.

 

Jobs were lost, homes were lost – hell, lives were lost. People were jumping off bridges when they discovered that, not only were they out of a job for themselves, but they were out of options for supporting their families. Livelihoods were ripped away from people of every walk of life, save a chosen few who were filthy stinking rich and always would be, even if the end of the world came and went, while everyone else starved and gave up hope.

So why had Arthur not come back _now,_ of all times?

Because Niviane had been right.

Obviously, the Great War hadn’t been enough to jar the world into a state of so much ruin that a knight – or a king – in shining armor with all of his men should be needed to pull everything back together again.

If Merlin thought being this far from home couldn’t get any worse, well, it just had.

Despite telling himself over and over again _not_ to come back to the States, here he was. Again. As if his life wasn’t already bollocksed enough, he just _had_ to stay in America. The Pull, as he had come to call it, wasn’t letting him go. He had to stay here, in New York.

Brooklyn in the 1920s had been cake compared to the Bronx in the midst of a fiscal disaster.

And then, Annalise Penderghast is there.

If there was ever an Irish-American with a lot to say, it’s Penny. She runs with the little boys and chews bubblegum when she can get her hands on the stuff, and she makes friends easily. She’s all charisma and a loud voice.

She’d stolen an apple and a paper from Merlin, even though he’d been reading said paper and taking a bite out of said apple at the time, but that was that. They’d become friends immediately. Never mind the fact that Penny was nine and was missing three of her baby teeth.

 

“’S your name? You call me Penny, ‘kay?” she lisps, with her hands on her hips, wearing a messenger’s cap that’s way too big for her.

“Marty.” He reaches out for his apple back, but he doesn’t get it.

“You lay a finger on my friends over there and you gotta answer to me. You a shady lookin’ bloke. Don’t you mess wit’ me, Morty, I got my eye on you.”

“It’s Marty.” He hates the name, and can’t remember why he picked it (maybe it was because it sounded more American) but he’s already made his bed. Can’t do anything but lie in it now. “And _you’re_ the one who stole from me!” He tries so hard to sound scolding, but there’s a laugh in his voice. The girl is so _young._ And sort of adorable.

“Sure.”

“You honestly think I’d lie about my name being Marty?”

“Ya never know, do ya?” she drawls in her mixed northern Irish accent.

"Well you're a sharp one, aren't you?"

She grins a sly little grin, and Merlin just _knows_ he’s done for. Little Penny Penderghast, the terror of the schoolyard and the streets of the Bronx, apparently. The queen of the urchins, and she's damn proud of it. The petite, straggly little thing has stolen Merlin's heart.

Popping her bubblegum, Penny raises her little hand in salute to Merlin before scampering off to wreak havoc with her dirty gang of small boys in oversized jackets and messenger caps that hang low over their eyes. Just before she’s too far away, Penny throws a look over her shoulder and winks. Merlin sits there, empty-handed after the girl had taken his paper and his apple. He can get a new paper. Actually, he’d probably do better with just asking someone the news of the day from anyone off the street. He doesn’t trust the _Wall Street Journal,_ since it’s only been around for fifty-something years and has to compete with _The New York Times_. He doesn’t expect the paper to be especially successful in the future or anything.

But he does believe that Penny Penderghast has melted his heart, and he’s glad he got to meet her, however briefly.

 

Another one, he thinks to himself. But _how many more_.


	9. Devotion and Doubt

People are so bloody… _inept_ , so blindingly stupid, they had to go and start another war. A war so insufferable, miserable, traumatizing and heartbreaking just like _all_ the others but in so many new and different ways, Merlin’s heart is breaking in places he never thought it could.

The war started and everything had to go crumbling around him just as he was starting to pick up the pieces. Niviane had been right again.

And Merlin wants to give up, he really does.

1944, and he’d made the decision to step up as a soldier in the new world war.

He wanted to go in as a nurse, but they wouldn’t allow it. They said he was fit enough to fight, and even though he doesn’t want to, Merlin can’t exactly say no. Well, he can, but he might still have a chance of joining the medical facilities while on the battlefield, and he knows he’ll be able to save people in the midst of the chaos. Being an army medic is completely possible.

He starts going by the name Victor Richardson. Completely random, since they just happen to be the first two names he picked out of a book, and he’s sticking with them. A much more respectable (and appealing) name than Emerson McMurphy, or whatever bloody name he’d chosen back in the nineteenth century.

 

The smell of burnt coffee, which is what they’ve been subsisting on for the last week and a half in addition to mouldy biscuits and some sort of white paste, makes him want to gag. There’s not much left in his stomach to heave up, but that smell triggers his gag reflex more effectively than the image of a soldier’s arm mangled beyond reparation by a landmine.

He never thought he could ever _dis_ like coffee.

If he’d told his past self from fifty years ago that he would one day loathe the taste of coffee, he would have laughed in his own face. But now just the smell of it makes him feel ill. Hell, just _thinking_ about the smell does; He will never be able to enjoy an espresso ever again.

While disappointing, that’s hardly his biggest worry.

He hasn’t been sleeping; under different circumstances, he wouldn’t have minded so much. But sitting  here in a muddied uniform, with half of his men dead and the other half injured, he would rather suffer the nightmares than live this waking nightmare. No dreams about death.

His friend died today. Emmet had been his name. Emmet was the most devoted man Merlin had ever met; he served his country well, and did so until his dying day.

Quick as a bullet, another soul was wrenched from Merlin’s grasp. The loss set Merlin’s insides on fire, leaving him grieving and alone for the millionth time in his life.

Always, always left alone.

**::{}{}{}::**

Coming back from the front lines, coming back to the “real world” and to London, felt like a cold shock to the system.

The Blitz. The camps. The wreckage. Misery at every turn. Nothing new. But at the same time, horrible all over again.

 _So many lives_ lost not just on the battleground, but in the camps – prisons, more like - and in people’s very own homes _._ So many dead, and for no explicable reason. A demon had risen from hell one day and called himself a leader, and then he’d ordered the murder of millions – _millions,_ Jesus _Christ_ – all of those people to be put to death. And for no crime whatsoever, but instead for their faith, and for the fact that they were seen in the eyes of the demon and his followers as “undesirable.” And others met the same fate if they were sympathizers to anyone “less than” desirable.

Merlin could just vomit.

His first plan is to move back to London to help as many survivors as he can. At any rate, it might take the edge off the newest wave of hellish nightmares haunting him, both asleep and awake.

**::{}{}{}::**

Merlin spends twenty-odd years with three different psychiatrists before the nightmares begin to subside – as does the physical pain, courtesy of a treatment that was all the rage in the ‘50s: electric shock therapy.

“And when did these dreams begin?”

“…Twenty years ago.”

The psychiatrist this time, an eternally serene and patient man with wire-rimmed spectacles, perfect teeth, and a ratty, blonde moustache, scratches away at his notepad.

“And twenty years ago, did something about your childhood seem especially chaotic?” Dr. Elliot asks patiently.

“Chaotic?” Merlin snorts. Chaotic is something of an understatement.

“Yes, of course. With the war on and all, your family must have been in a similar situation to many others. Were you living in London at the time?”

“I… I was in Germany.” It’s not a lie, but he knows it’s going to lead to one. Or many.

“I know that this is a heavy topic to broach during these meetings, Mister Richardson, but I can assure you it is for the best. The more we talk about it, the better. So, how did you feel about your childhood?”

Merlin hates questions like that. He knows no one will really be able to help him if he has to lie in his responses. He chooses the best option, which is to leave out most of the truth and dance around the question, just enough that it’s believable.

“My childhood wasn’t… no, I wouldn’t say it was terrible. I had a very loving mother” Merlin says, sitting very still in his seat. He’s glad that this time he isn’t being made to lie down on one of those hard couches while he pours out his feelings to a shrink.

“And your father?”

Even after all these years, a small lump still forms in the back of Merlin’s throat when speaking about his father.

“He left my mother before I was born. I met him once, just before he died.”

“Hmm… I see,” Dr. Elliot scribbles something else into the notebook. Merlin keeps from scowling.

Psychiatric treatment in the 1950s had been brutal. The sixties feel far more laid back in comparison, and there have been so many waves created in the realm of psychology that modern treatments are leagues better than some of the things he endured in the past – things that, to Merlin, would easily pass for torture.

“So how old were you twenty years ago, exactly?”

Twelve hundred and fourty-eight years old.

“I was eight.”

“I see… yes,” _scratch, scribble, scratch._

“And were your nightmares similar to the ones you are having now?”

“More or less, yes.” Merlin barely registers the incessant scratching of pen on paper.

“Hm… and the burning boat. That’s been a continuing image in these nightmares?”

Merlin nods. Dr. Elliot hums in acknowledgment and makes another note.

Just prescribe a damned medication already, why doesn’t he? Merlin doesn’t have it in him to spit out lies for very much longer.

He will never fight in a war again, he’s already made up his mind. And he cringes at the thought of seeking any sort of treatment for the nightmares and flashbacks that make their appearances, however less frequently than they used to. But without these sessions, he has no one he can talk to at all. Doesn’t matter that the man with whom he’s chosen to confide in is paid a substantial sum of money just to listen to Merlin talk about himself.

Dr. Elliot insists that everyone who walks through his door is called a “client,” and not a “patient.” Merlin can appreciate his reasons for doing so. It makes Merlin, and probably others, feel like they’re being taken seriously. Not like they’re dying of a terminal illness or going insane, but like they’re ordinary people who accept that they need _help_. Sometimes, just accepting that little fact can be the hardest part.

Finally, the scritch-scratching of the pen ceases. Dr. Elliot pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with a finger.

“Well, Mister Richardson,”

“Victor’s fine.”

“Of course. Well, Victor, for now your best bet is to continue with the medication. You’ve been taking it regularly, I assume?”

Merlin nods truthfully.

“Good, good. Glad to hear.”

“They make me feel tired.”

“Well, yes, that is one of the side effects. They’re meant to help with the insomnia, so drowsiness would be a given.” Dr. Elliot shrugs, and Merlin watches the ridiculous puce bowtie press below the man’s chin before he drops his shoulders back down. The bowtie plus the appalling tweed suit make for an ensemble that Merlin’s been having some trouble wrapping his head around. Really, the man studies psychology, surely he’d realize what effect such a horrible getup might have on his defenseless patients?

“Maybe if I went back to the old medication--”

“No, Victor, I told you in our last session that I would strongly advise against reverting back to the old treatments. No no, barbiturates are far less sophisticated and not as controlled as the benzodiazepines – pardon the pharmaceutical talk – but you still need to be careful.” Merlin fights the urge to roll his eyes. He’s worked in pharmaceuticals before, and in countless apothecaries. He knows what a sophisticated sedative is. “Too many cases of people abusing the drugs these days. But have the new pills been helping with the insomnia at _all_?”

Merlin thinks about it for a moment. He can’t remember the last time he slept well. Last night he managed to get six hours or sleep, which had been no small miracle, so he answers in the affirmative.

“Excellent, I’m glad to hear that, I truly am.” Dr. Elliot flips his notebook shut and stands.

Merlin does the same, reaching out to shake Dr. Elliot’s hand before reaching for his coat. “That’s all I wanted to ask about then.”

“Victor, are you sure you don’t want to continue the sessions? They seemed to be doing a world of good just a month ago. You were doing better. I could see it in your eyes.”

From the tone in the doctor’s voice, Merlin knows the man isn’t saying this just to con him into another costly session. Dr. Elliot actually sounds like… well, like he cares.

He gives the man in the tweed suit the benefit of half a smile, but his decision is firm. “I don’t think so, doctor.”

Dr. Elliot nods with a sigh, like he was expecting that answer. “All right then. It is your decision, after all. I can only make recommendations.”

“I understand. Thank you, doctor. For all your help.”

He gives a final nod, and then Merlin is headed for the door.

“Oh, and Victor,” Dr. Elliot says before Merlin can reach the exit, “…take care of yourself. It’s never going to be easy, but I think you’re going to pull through. And if you ever decide to come back for a visit, my door is always open to old clients.” He smiles, and the ratty blonde mustache turns up.

Merlin smiles at the sincerity behind the offer. Dr. Elliot is flawed, just like the rest of them, but he’s one thing that the other psychiatrists never were: compassionate.

“Thanks, doc.”

With that, Merlin pulls the door open and steps outside into the evening air.

Dr. Elliot _wasn’t_ one of them.

And the fact that he wasn’t anyone special? That, most of all, makes Merlin smile. Maybe there is some hope for the human race after all.

**::{}{}{}::**

The next two decades are something of a blur. Some of the highlights involve things like going to a Rolling Stones concert and getting a backstage pass to meet the band – Maybe a little bit of magic had been involved, but that was beside the point.

In the sixties he briefly worked as a chauffeur for two men who would end up being some of the most infamous mob bosses to ever grace the grimy streets of London. Merlin’s glad he didn’t have to do more than say a brief “Cheerio,” and, “no worries, the bill’s already covered by a friend of yours,” before speeding off to get as far away from the men as possible at the end of that very strange month.

Merlin liked the ‘70s.

Sometime around ’72 or ’73 he’d run into a man who was so similar in appearance and mannerism to his old friend Gwaine that it was actually frightening. But holy hell, Gwaine sure would have fit right in. Casual sex, a slew of new and questionable drugs, all mixed together with rock ‘n’ roll? Sign that man right up.

Gwaine would have been in his element.

Merlin’s almost grateful that the man’s _not_ around to see it. He’s almost certain that Gwaine would’ve grabbed the ‘70s by the pants and made that decade his bitch; he would’ve done it while smoking a joint and wearing a pair of John Lennon sunglasses, too.

It’s the 1980s that hauls Merlin up by the pants and takes him for a nice, friendly trip back to an old friend of his: reality.

 

**::{}{}{}::**

 

The door of the second story flat swings open to reveal an all-around disheveled young man. Bright hazel eyes scan Merlin up and down, while he finishes rolling up the sleeves of his green and brown plaid shirt.

Merlin does his own scan, taking in the bloke’s outfit, his face, as well as all the unopened boxes crammed into the sitting room behind them.

The name in the ad said Max Hornith, so if Merlin’s got the address right, then this must be Max.

Max has dark hair, with a messy fringe framing his forehead very similar to Merlin’s, and a set of cheekbones that could rival his own, they’re just that sharp. His taste in clothing is a different matter, Merlin thinks while he eyeballs the shade of green in the plaid shirt. Unlike Merlin, Max’s style is less a jumble of different decades, but instead simple and understated, if a little on the shabby side. His faded jeans are frayed at the bottoms and stained with blue and red paint at the knees. Whether the stains were put there on purpose or not, Merlin doesn’t know.

“Morning! I’m guessing you’re Emmet?” the young man asks as politely as he can through a yawn, and Merlin notices that he looks… tired. Really tired.

“That’d be me” Merlin says, shouldering his duffel and gripping tightly to an equally stuffed bag in his other hand. For someone who’s over a thousand years old, he doesn’t actually have that many belongings to speak of (although money is entirely a different matter). Granted, there are the other four bags and one box waiting back in the car – an old, but well-kept, red Beetle.

The majority of his possessions are clothes, and the majority of those clothes consist of a myriad of t-shirts with the logos of various bands from three or four decades. Merlin’s become very partial to hard rock, but classics like the Beatles definitely have a place in his heart, as well as his continuously expanding t-shirt collection.

“Right, make yourself at home then.” Max looks around for something before leaning down to grab a messenger bag from underneath a reclining chair. “I’ve gotta get to my first class in a half hour, so you’ll have the place to yourself to get your things in order. That’s not all you brought, is it?” He eyes the two bags in Merlin’s arms. Merlin shakes his head.

“Got a few more things in the car” he says. Max suddenly realizes that the bags are probably heavy, and quickly ushers Merlin into the apartment so he can set his things down. Merlin steps in and drops the bags off to the side, out of the way, and rolls his shoulders to get some of the feeling back.

Looking around the messy sitting room, Max asks, “Do you need some help moving the rest of your things in? I have a bit of time before I’ve gotta jet.”

Merlin grins. Thank god his roommate isn’t a complete pillock like the last one. “I appreciate it, but I think I can manage. You can go ahead to your classes. I promise I won’t break anything while you’re gone.”

Max grins back, a glint in his hazel eyes. “Good. See that you don’t.” Then he turns to make his way carefully through piles and clutter, until he’s safely in the little corridor. Merlin watches the bloke shut a door behind him, probably to his room, and then he turns to head back out to bring the rest of his things in. Lucky for him, the apartment is only on the second floor.

“And don’t steal anything either!” he hears Max call out from his room. Merlin laughs, and he can tell that he’s going to like Max very much.

******

The first two weeks are smooth sailing. Merlin gets his things in order, and he likes his room. The kitchenette is the perfect size and he doesn’t mind sharing a bathroom. There’s just enough space for two people in the flat, and he likes it that way. He prefers to have just enough room instead of too much. He’d tried living in a penthouse suite once, in New York City, but there was just too much space. He’d felt out of place and lonely.

With Max for a roommate, life has become the opposite of lonely, _or_ boring. Merlin caught on quickly that Max was an easily excitable bloke, constantly moving about and always going to some class or another. He’s a history major, with a minor in philosophy; Merlin’s sure the kid’s parents are proud, if a little worried about their boy’s future career with a degree like that. But Merlin couldn’t be bothered, even if the bloke was majoring in ancient Nigerian pottery or Theory of Taiwanese literature, or what have you, to be perfectly honest.

Max seems to love school, but after a few weeks, Merlin realizes that the kid doesn’t seem to have any friends to speak of.

Well, close friends. Although Merlin does get to hear stories about some of Max’s odder classmates.

While Merlin hangs around at the flat, or goes to the library, or runs errands, Max is trying to get himself through university without facing incomparable debt after graduation.

He’d earned something by way of a grant, and a very small scholarship covered the cost of books, but it didn’t cover a whole lot of the tuition cost. The university is a decent one, and not an easy one to be accepted into. Max is a very smart kid, if a little funny sometimes. All he'd needed was a bit of help paying rent and some of the grocery bills. Which was why he’d been so keen on accepting Merlin’s application to be his roommate.

As far as Merlin’s magic was concerned... well, there hadn't been much of a segue from "normal" to "as far from normal as life could possibly be."

Max discovered it before Merlin’s first month as a roommate was up.

This might have been an issue, especially with Merlin worrying if a mortal could really keep mum about such a huge secret.

Sure, it _might_ have been an issue, but here's where Merlin loses any and all worries about being outed, because _surpriiiise_. Max has magic, too.

 

The entire conversation had been relatively civil.

At least, no one had yelled, and no magic was used to break anything.

In fact, Max had been incredibly calm about it, as soon as he realized what Merlin was.

At first, his eyes had gone wide with terror when Merlin caught him heating up water on the stove with a quick flick of his wrist, and he’d dropped his coffee mug on the tile floor where it shattered in the otherwise silent flat.

But as soon as Merlin waved a hand and repaired the mug without so much as touching a shard, Max let out an enormous breath of relief.

He wasn’t in danger of being outed. Well, he hoped not, anyway.

After that, Max’s side of the whole secrets-revealed conversation had gone something like:

“Just please don’t be a psycho who does magic blood rituals and stuff like that. I will _not_ live with a roommate who kills rabbits to appease Pagan gods or whatever. That’s just sick.”

“I don’t kill rabbits!” Merlin had protested, but Max had only been joking. The guy's sense of humor was seven kinds of fucked up, but it only made Merlin like the kid more.

“All right, I believe you. But you’re telling me your story whether you like it or not.”

Merlin had protested more to that, and after a heated argument that lasted ten minutes, Max had let the matter drop. Although he was almost certain to bring the subject up again at some point.

 

“As long as you don’t throw me out, I think we’ll be fine” Merlin teases, once the argument settles into something less tense and more civil. “I already made the down payment for the next two months’ rent. Also, just so you know and don’t freak out, I also, erm, have this aging spell that I do from time to time. To make myself look older.”

“Oh no, please tell me that’s not some kink of yours-”

“ _Gods_ no, no.” Merlin throws up his hands. “I just wanted to let you know so that you wouldn’t freak out if you ever see an old man with a beard trying to get into our flat. I just use the spell every now and then to steer clear of people I don’t feel like running into. It’s rare, but sometimes I bump into folks I’d really rather not have to meet firsthand. Sorcerers, mostly. People who might be after me.”

“So you’re running from someone? Why? Are you someone important?” Max’s brow furrows.

“Yes – _No.”_ Merlin runs his hands through his hair. “Complicated, I guess. Maybe we can develop some sort of need-to-know system, while I’m here? If I think you need to know it, I’ll tell you, and vice versa. How’s that?”

To which Max curtly replies, “Right. Fine by me. Well then I guess it’s safe to tell you, since we’ve already spilled quite a bit about ourselves: I’m gay. And if that bothers you, I can find myself a new roommate."

"Fair enough," Merlin says. "If we're putting everything out on the table I might as well add, I once ripped my trousers in front of the Prime Minister."

"You're joking!" Max says with a wide grin. "Seems like we’ve both been hiding more than we thought, eh?”

******

After the whole _I have magic_ incident, Merlin and Max find themselves hanging out more often at the flat, and even go out to the nearby pub on Fridays for a drink and a good long chat, like they’ve been best friends their entire lives.

They have a good dynamic. They might be very different in terms of taste in clothing, choice of tea versus coffee, and which direction the toilet paper should be facing, but they get along like nobody’s business. And with their similar enough physiognomy, from the fringe of dark, lightly curled hair to the high cheekbones, they often get confused in public as brothers.

The only thing that plagues Merlin is keeping his identity hidden. Max might know that he’s a sorcerer, yes, but he has no idea _which_ sorcerer. Max would probably have a stroke if he knew the truth, and Merlin would like to keep Max from having a meltdown if he can help it. The kid already has enough on his plate, with school and the bookstore gig he works thirty hours a week.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell Max – he does – but it’s more important to keep his real name under wraps. It might be the twentieth century, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still magic users and occult groups searching for him. Either to kill him, or to use him. He’s lived long enough to learn that it’s better to remain hidden, until Arthur comes back. If Arthur comes back.

Oblivious to Merlin’s constant inner conflict, Max is incredibly prudent about when he uses his magic, and how he goes about it. Merlin likes how subtle Max is capable of being when he wants to be. It means no explosions of uncontrolled magic sending all the electrical appliances haywire; it means not having to worry about the neighbors hearing strange noises coming from the flat and calling the police at four in the morning; and it means no inane questions about how to turn dirt into gold, or some other bollocks that Merlin can’t be bothered with. He will not have a repeat of the philosopher’s stone fiasco, thanks but no thanks.

Merlin hardly utilizes his own magic nowadays. Neither does Max, although _why_ he keeps his gifts so bottled up, Merlin doesn’t know. Nor does he want to ask. That was something personal for every magic user, whether they decided to put their abilities to use or keep them quiet. Merlin can relate to both sides.

Merlin’s own magic usage had plummeted ever since the seventies; so many things had been made so easy for people that magic just wasn’t _needed_ as much.

It wasn’t that he didn’t use his magic at _all_ , he did, he just didn’t use it for big things. Little things, yes, like heating up water for tea when he didn’t feel like waiting in the morning, or cleaning the flat when Max forgets that it’s his turn. Again.

Honestly, Merlin feels like he’s beginning to understand why parents yell at their children to _clean their bloody rooms._  

 

And speak of the devil…

“Oh my _god”_ Max practically bursts through the door of their flat, on the last Friday of the third month of Merlin’s new residency at the flat in Muswell Hill, London. “You’re not gonna believe this, okay, so you know Jess, right?” he asks, eagerly tossing down his school bag.

“Um, no?” Merlin frowns and shuts his book. He’s read _Anna Karenina_ twice already, anyway.

He’s only been unemployed for a month, ever since he quit his job as an editor for reasons he would rather not mention, and he’s already become restless for something to do. He needs to find another job. Hell, even a coffee shop gig would do at this rate.  

Max huffs, because really, why does no one ever pay attention? “ _Jess_ , as in, the girl I’ve told you about three times already.” Like that’s supposed to mean something to Merlin?

“The one you told me about who’s been mouthing off to your psych professor lately?” Merlin asks. “Blonde? Scottish?”

“That’s her,” Max nods thoughtfully. “I just had class with her, and the prof started talking about how men’s and women’s brains are completely different. He told us that this was why men are better at math,”

Merlin rolls his eyes. He knows where this story is headed. He’s heard three others just like it.

Max catches the eye roll. “Yeah, I know, so naturally Jess gets angry as hell, and she _totally_ goes off on the prof, telling him that a brain is a brain, and girls can be good at math if they jolly well want to be. Now this is where it gets _really_ good.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “So this bird crosses her arms, all huffy like, and she tells him, ‘What would _you_ know, anyway? You’re just a fookin’ psych prof, not a fookin’ neuroscientist!’ Shit was epic, mate, I’m telling you. She really gave it to him straight.”

While Merlin still hasn’t wrapped his head around much of the ridiculous slang of the times, the story is still funny. No, wait, it’s bloody hilarious.

He’s just glad that he stopped working as a professor. Kids have become _bold_. He’d rather be the one doing the heckling.

Not that Merlin blames them, because it’s really about damn time a few ignorant adults were put in their place; but along those same lines, the kids doing the tellings-off might want to handle it with a little more diplomacy than Jess’s profane methods.  

“I’m just surprised that this Jess hasn’t been thrown out of uni by now,” mutters Merlin, and he shuffles over to the coat rack to grab a rain jacket. “I’m headed out to get a few groceries. You need anything?”

Max shrugs. “Not really. Oh! Get some of those shortbread biscuits, yeah? I think we’re out of those.”

“Max, we just bought a tin last week. You mean to tell me they’re _gone_ already?” Figures. With a sheepish look, Max makes a vague gesture with his hands.

“Just buy more? I’ll pay you back after I’m done my shift at the book store.”

Merlin shakes his head like a parent musing over the antics of their child, when they find out that the kid’s found the cookie jar and eaten half the contents before dinner.

“Yeah, I’ll do that. See you in a bit, yeah?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Emmet!”

“Don’t mention it” Merlin mumbles on his way out the door. “Am I really the only adult here?”

**::{}{}{}::**

It’s just started to drizzle when he gets to the corner store.

They don’t need a ton of groceries. But remembering the last time they forgot to stock up before a thunderstorm, he knows he won’t make the same mistake twice.

The only thing they currently have in the flat is a tin of stale biscuits, some peanut butter, half a carton of eggs, one last piece of bread (probably mouldy by now), and half a liter of milk. Max had insisted that it wasn’t supposed to go bad for another few days, but according to the smell, Merlin would have to insist otherwise.

The shop’s prices are excellent for someone living on a university student’s budget.

Merlin isn’t wanting for money. Quite the opposite actually; with what he has scattered in a number of bank accounts under years-old aliases all over the globe, he has enough money to buy himself an island – and a private jet for said island. Not that he _would_ buy an island, but it’s a possibility in theory. Merlin just doesn’t care for the snobby lifestyle that all the upper class folk in Britain seem to love so much. It’s too posh, and what’s the point? He’d rather live his life. A small apartment will do, and having a roommate at least keeps him front becoming a hermit.

He remembers trying that once. Didn’t work out.

The fluorescent lights of the corner store buzz overhead and have already started to give Merlin a headache. He quickly grabs a basket, eager to get the errand over with, and heads to the aisle where the biscuits are kept. Can’t forget about Max’s request; if he does forget, he’ll have to deal with the guy’s whining and whinging until he finally buys the damned things. It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.

And speaking of whining, that’s exactly what Merlin hears coming from the aisle adjacent to his. He tosses the first tin or shortbreads he finds into his basket and makes his way around to the next aisle.

A young woman holding a basket stands in the middle of the aisle as she tries to quiet down the little boy clinging her leg. His scruff of golden blonde hair and button nose almost make up for the obnoxious way he’s begging his mother to buy him sweets.

Merlin feels a twinge of sympathy. Digging around in his pockets for the grocery list, he heads past the aisle where the mother and son are and goes towards the dairy section for milk.

 

The little boy’s adorably chubby face makes a second appearance that day, not five minutes later, when he and Merlin come face to face in the cleaning supplies aisle. The boy must have wandered off while his mother’s become preoccupied with brands of clothing detergent.

“Hey, what’s your name?” the boy asks, coming up from behind like a damned ninja, startling Merlin so badly that he nearly drops a jar of tomato sauce on his foot.

“Wh-what?”

“What’s your name? I’m Cole.” The boy extends a very small hand, and after a pause, Merlin leans down to awkwardly shake the kid’s hand. His own eyes lock with a set of pale blues.

“Hi, Cole. My name’s Emmet.”

“Nice to meet you, Emmet,” the boy replies, polite but very, very serious for a ten or eleven year-old.

“You too” Merlin says hastily, about to turn on his heel and find another aisle. The boy stops him.

“Do you have a kid too, Emmet?”

Merlin freezes. “Do I…? No, sorry. Ehm, why do you ask?”

He doesn’t miss the way Cole glances towards his mother before shrugging. His yellow raincoat is far too big around the shoulders and makes him look even smaller. “Just wondering. My mum really wants another kid, but she says we can’t afford it right now.”

“…Ah.” What exactly is he supposed to say to _that?_ Kids seem to have a special gift for creating the most uncomfortable conversations. Merlin deducts from the way the boy talks about him and his mother that there isn’t a father in the picture, currently. Perhaps the kid wants his mother to find someone. Merlin instantly sees what the boy is playing at.

“Are you single then?” the boy interrogates shamelessly. “My mum is.”

Confirming Merlin’s suspicions and simultaneously making Merlin even more uncomfortable, Merlin adjusts the basket on his arm and forces a smile.

“I am… but I’m not really looking for anyone right now. Sorry, kid.”

The boy’s face falls. Great, now Merlin’s made him upset. Just what he needs.

“But I’m sure that your mother will find someone when she’s ready, y’know? We can’t always get what we want right away.”

“How would you know what either of us wants?” the boy asks, glaring daggers. Shite. Okay, Merlin knows he doesn’t have much time before he really upsets the kid.

“I don’t, really, I only meant… when someone wants to be with someone else, they’ll know who the right person is when they meet them,” he explains. “Love can be tricky. Just don’t go getting your hopes up about… I mean…” Ohh no, wrong thing to say.

“As if _you’d_ even know what love is,” the boy snarls, little hands clenched into fists. Merlin backs away a step. Sad children are one thing. Angry children are another, and they are no laughing matter. “You’re just a lonely man, buying your lonely box of tea and stupid eggs, and I think you’ll be alone for the rest of your life.”

 _Christ,_ Merlin thinks to himself.

What’s this kid been through to warrant such an extreme reaction?

Merlin hasn’t heard the ‘You will die sad and alone’ tirade in quite some time. And hell, he’s _never_ heard it from a child. It’s like a switch is flipped.

Suddenly his hands feel cold and his jaw clenches. He’s not… he’s not upset, per se, but he’s on his way. As patiently as he can, he looks down at the boy, and murmurs, “Not everyone needs to be with another person. Sometimes being alone is okay, too, yeah?”

But the boy shakes his head firmly. “No, everyone needs someone. Grownups need other grownups or else they get sad. Right, mummy?” Merlin looks up and sees that the boy’s mother has finally noticed her little boy talking to a stranger.

“Cole, what have you been saying to the poor man?” she chides, her expression tired and her short hair just a little frizzed as she makes her way briskly over to the two of them. She must be having a stressful day. Her smile is apologetic when she says, “I’m so sorry, has he been bothering you?”

“Not at all,” Merlin assures. He knows it’s a lie.

After that, he pretty much rushes to finish his grocery shopping and gets through checkout in record time. He isn’t seeing things clearly. All he can see is the boy glaring at him, insisting furiously that everyone needs someone or they’ll be sad and lonely for the rest of their lives. He knows it’s far from true, but the words trigger something much, much deeper.

Since when is a _kid_ suddenly able to see into his soul and tell him his deepest insecurities, all with a single _look_? He shouldn’t let something a child says foul up his mood.

But frankly? Screw immortality. Merlin’s life is only going to continue in an eternal cycle of frustration, depression, late-night, less-than-honourable activities and the realization when he wakes that he’s wasting the only life he has.

It doesn’t matter that he has forever.

He’d wanted his days to mean something. There’s got to be something, there’s _always_ something to stick around for, if he would just hunker down and take a good look. No matter what, he can’t forget that there is always that light at the end of the tunnel—He’s just having a crap time hacking away at the tunnel walls with a pickaxe that’s been worn down from years of fruitless searching.

He doesn’t know what’s snapped in him, but when he leaves the shop, he can feel himself shaking with anger. And it has nothing to do with some kid. It has more to do with all the frustration he’s been bottling up for the last – oh, fourteen hundred years? The kid was just the cherry on top of the cake.

Without thinking, he walks into the first store that sells alcohol and purchases a bottle of whiskey, one of rum, and a six-pack of the cheapest beer they have. He sees red.

**::{}{}{}::**

After twenty years of being sober, his alcohol tolerance doesn’t seem to have gone down very much. He’s four beers and half a bottle of whiskey in before he starts to feel a buzz, and the rest of the bottle of whiskey before any deeper thoughts become dormant in favor of sitting in front of the telly and watching shite daytime television.

 

Two hours later, Max gets back from class.

He plops down his bag, takes one look at Merlin, and swears.

“Oh, fuck no, this isn’t happening. Emmet, what the hell, mate? What happened?”

He knew that Merlin had been… for lack of a better word, something of an alcoholic a few years back (twenty years, but Merlin left out the details). After telling Max that he was sober and wished to keep it that way, Max had done a very honourable thing: he’d chugged the last two beers in the fridge, then promised not to stock his alcohol in the flat. He claimed he had a friend who could keep it safe without consuming it all himself.

“Emmet, look at me a minute.”

Merlin doesn’t hear him at first. A faint buzzing tickles his eardrums.

He frowns, and reaches for the glass on the coffee table. He looks down at the liquid swishing in the bottom, puts the glass down, grabs the bottle next to him, and pours in a slightly more generous amount. Then he takes the glass again and knocks the contents back without a second thought.

Since when was this something _he_ did?

The telly shuts off abruptly. “And I take it you’ve fallen off the wagon because…?”

Merlin jerks his head around to see Max, standing with both hands on his hips and a frown of disapproval clouding his expression.

“Oh, just you,” Merlin shrugs, turning away.

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Drinking means forgetting. Don’t want to talk about it.” He waves an arm around like he’s trying to wave off a particularly pesky fly. “Now lea’me ‘lone.” Gods, how much did he drink? He’s normally been good about holding his alcohol. Well, he was good at it when he _used_ to drink, anyway.

“If by that you mean, drinking is for _getting_ a _hangover_ before you’ve even had supper, then yeah. You’re on the right track” Max snaps. “Put the whiskey down.”

Merlin looks like he couldn’t care less. Max tries again. “Just put the damned whiskey down, will you?”

“Y’right…” Merlin nods thoughtfully, swirling his drink around at the bottom of the glass, lips pursed as if concentrating hard on a thought. “Need somethin’ stronger... Rum?”

Max shakes his head. “No, you are _not_ doing this again, Emmet. No spiraling. Remember what you told me happened the last time you fell off the wagon?”

“Huh” Merlin laughs without humor, remembering that night perfectly.

And that entire month, for that matter. That was twenty years ago. Merlin had finally joined Alcoholics Anonymous officially. A month after he joined, he’d stopped going to the meetings in lieu of going to any party he could get invited to.

“Went to a frat party, danced, got gloriously smashed,” he muses, “and woke up the next day in a hospital bed with needles in my arms and something stuck in my throat.” The feeling of a tube being removed from his esophagus still stings when he thinks too hard about it, and those moments after they’d pumped his stomach of the last of all that toxic liquid still makes his queasy. “Doctors had no idea how I recovered so quickly.” He purses his lips thoughtfully before raising his glass and tipping it back, downing the contents in one go.

Max's scowl deepens.

The crummy springs in the sofa cushions squeak when Merlin stands, on a mission towards the kitchenette.

“Sit down” Max commands. Merlin scowls, but complies, sitting back down.

“Emmet, if you just tell me what’s going on, maybe we can talk this out. We can get you help. Or I can help you, I dunno. But you need to tell me what’s going on, yeah?”

Merlin laughs bitterly. “Oh, so you’re a shrink now?”

“Emmet I’m serious. If something’s wrong, you need to deal with it properly. Not drink the pain away. It’s not going to work.”

“You don' understand. Don’t you get it? I have _nothing left_. I have no purpose, nothing to live for other than helping people who will die anyway, and death seems nothing short of impossible for me, this,” he holds up his glass, “this whiskey is all I have now.”

“Emmet, just shut up, you’re not making any sense-”

“What’s the point in making it all the way there, when the world’s already turned into such a cesspool that no ‘great king,’ Once and Future or past and forgotten or whatever, will be able to pull the human race from the hole they’ve dug for themselves?” He raises his glass in a mock toast. “‘N I’m no better’n any of ‘em” he slurs, shaking his head mournfully. “Arthur would be ashamed’f me, ‘f he saw me now.”

Max stares. “What… what on _earth_ are you talking about? Emmet, for god’s sake, put the glass down and take a deep breath.”

He heads towards the kitchenette to grab Merlin a glass of water. Merlin doesn’t stop him. “We’re going to get you through this. And – and whoever this Arthur is, I’m fairly sure he _would_ be ashamed of you right now, considering you’re drunk off your arse and not making any sense at all. The only thing you’ve got going for you right now is a screaming liver and a future hangover. That _I’m_ going to have to deal with in the morning, you arse.”

“I can handle m’alcohol juss fine.”

Max runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up in five different directions. He mutters something that Merlin doesn’t hear.

But then a lightbulb goes off.

“…Emmet?”

“Hmm”

“Come for a drive with me.”

Merlin whips his head around, then regrets it when he tastes something nasty in the back of his mouth. “A drive? Where?” He narrows his eyes, suspicious while he looks at the dregs of his drink in the bottom of the glass tumbler.

“Just a drive. To clear the head, it might do us both some good.” When Merlin doesn’t respond at first, Max huffs and crosses his arms, still clinging to what remains of his patience. “I mean _now_.”

“Ah.”

**::{}{}{}::**

They take Merlin’s car.

The tired old Beetle pulls up to the curbside just in front of a small church, which is closed off from the rest of the world by a dated iron fence with few missing bars. Parts of it are crumbling from rust.

Merlin reads the name of the place off a plaque nailed above the main doors.

 

**|+  Saint Joan’s Episcopal Church + |**

                               

“Thought you said we were going for a drive,” Merlin grouches, but doesn’t try to get back in the car.

Max takes him by the arm and leads – more like drags him – up the steps.

When they get inside, Merlin finds that the interior is a lot more depressing than he’d expected.

At the front of the sanctuary, above a pitiful wooden altar, is a painted cutout of a stained glass window, hanging a bit lopsided from a nail on the wall.

The rest of the windows on either side of the room are small, allowing for little light to make its way in. The entire place smells of dust and mildew. In all honesty, he would rather prefer the room without the cutout stained glass window. It would be less claustrophobic, at least.

Merlin knew, the minute he stepped foot inside, why Max had brought him here.

He feels that particular energy, that oh-so-particular mixed energy that comes from a room full of people with problems to share and tears to spill. And yep, there are a good number of people already sitting down – about twenty faces turn around to look back at them both as Max leads the way over to the nearest empty pew in the very back of the chapel.

Merlin’s not an idiot; he’s been to his fair share of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, both to get and give help.

They take their seats behind a woman in a cherry red peacoat, with sunglasses perched on her head. Merlin can’t see why she would need sunglasses. It’s February. Also, it’s London.

The woman turns to look at the late arrivals and smirks. Her gaze lingers on Merlin.

“Not religious, are you?” she asks. Her accent is nasal and immediately irritating.

Merlin cants his head to the side. “Erm, I am, actually. Sort of... I guess?” He shrugs.

He’s not surprised when the woman raises a skeptical eyebrow. She looks like one of those mums who goes to her children’s football matches and yells insults at the opposing ten-year-olds while sporting a pair of Ray-Ban knockoffs.

“So what religion do you practice?” she presses, pursing her brightly lipsticked lips together subjectively.

“Ehm... An old one.”

“There are a lot of those,” she snaps. “Judaism and Islam are probably the oldest, you either of those?”

Max pretends he can’t hear the conversation and looks around the chapel for some sort of distraction. Merlin shakes his head. “It’s um, one you haven’t heard of. I mean, you probably haven’t, but who knows.” He shrugs.

“Ah…” the lady gives an all-too-knowing nod. Then she leans in, expression hungry and gleaming with less-than-innocent intentions. “So you’re one of those Beatnicks, eh? The hat makes sense, although the shirt..." she eyes Merlin's flannel and shrugs. "Well, at least it's fair to say not many men I’ve met can pull off flannel,” Merlin can hear the smirk in her voice, although he’s too busy watching another woman walk towards the podium at the front of the church to catch the upward quirk of Skeptical’s bright pink lips. “S’pose I should’ve guessed, wearing those beanie hats and keeping that five o'clock shadow to look all _mysterious_ and involved in art. Just like the rest of 'em, eh? All trying to look like some brand of upper-class homeless person." She shakes her head, disapproving. "Never understood you lot. Odd bunch is what you are.”

“Sorry, but–”

“What, did you pick a religion out of a hat and decide to stick to it for a week or two? Wait, wait, let me guess...." she pretends to think about it for a moment. "Wiccan,” she finally decides. Merlin doesn't understand the need for such an attitude.

With a surreptitious nudge from Max, who’s been observing the entire exchange quietly, Merlin takes a deep breath and says, “ _No_ , I just mean it’s a very old religion that isn’t practiced very much anymore. I don’t really know the name for it. But my mother practiced it a bit, and so did my… um, my father and my great uncle. So I was raised with it.”

Max also looks interested; this is also news to him.

“Just an old religion” the woman deadpans, clearly not believing Merlin, but deciding it best to leave the subject where it is. “Got it...”

“Right. Just an Old Religion.”

The woman at the front of the chapel takes her spot behind the podium and calls the start of the meeting. Merlin doesn’t speak the entire time, but he does listen. Slowly, the twisting in his gut subsides, and he feels ashamed for needing a reminder that he’s not the only one who’s been suffering. Wow. He feels like a selfish git.

Max might be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. And bringing Merlin here was probably the best thing he could have done. Merlin needs to remember to thank Max when all of this is over.

**::{}{}{}::**

When they get back to the flat, Max heads straight to the kitchen to make them both a hot cup of tea, brings out two steaming mugs, and hands one of them to Merlin before taking a seat in his usual La-Z-Boy recliner. He takes one look at Merlin, gestures to the sofa, and nods, prompting him to _spill_.

He wants the full story. And, Merlin thinks, he does deserve to know.

As if reading his mind, Max bites out, “And you can take that ‘need-to-know’ bull and stick it where the sun don’t shine. I want to know the whole truth, Emmet.”

Merlin sits down opposite from Max, sinking a bit into the sofa. His empty glass from earlier that day stares up at him from the table, like a challenge. He takes a deep breath, grips his mug of tea to gather strength, and starts talking.

“Um… Well, firstly, you should know that my real name isn’t Emmet Mirridan” he confesses.

“Sorry?” Max’s looks like that was the last thing he was expecting to hear. “Really mate, so you can come clean about the magic, but not about your real name? I thought we were closer than that.” He gives Merlin a look of the utmost heartbreak.

“Max, we’ve only been living together for three months.”

“Yes, exactly!”

Merlin heaves a sigh, anticipating the worst. “I have my reasons for protecting my identity, all right?”

“Oh my god, don’t tell me you’re a magical assassin who’s been recruited by MI-5, are you?”

“Don’t I wish,” Merlin mutters.

Now Max looks even more intrigued. “Right… so if not that, then who are you really? _Really_ really?” He taps a restless foot on the ground, waiting.

“Only if you promise not to go blabbing to the first person you see when you step outside that door.” Merlin points to the door of the flat, even though it’s not entirely unnecessary.

“Holy shite, just answer the damn question already! D’you want me to piss myself from the anticipation?” 

Merlin nearly snorts a gulp of tea out through his nose. “All right! Christ, all right. But this is sensitive information, just to let you know. I’m serious about keeping my identity protected.”

Max glares at him until Merlin continues. Merlin sighs, and sets his tea down carefully, then leans back into the sofa with his arms crossed. “My real name isn’t Emmet, it’s Merlin. And I’m not twenty-four years old, I’m much, much older.”

He can see the cogs and gears whirring in Max’s skull. A beat of silence hangs in the air like a question.

Would Max even believe a word of this?

“Merlin… sorry, you don’t mean _the_ Merlin?” Max looks like he’s trying to put the pieces together, but it hasn’t entirely clicked. Which is perfectly understandable. It’s not really the most believable thing in the world, considering the mythical Merlin of Arthurian legend has been around for centuries, and the Merlin in front of him is... well, a normal bloke in his twenties, with clothing that's borderline weird and mismatched to the current year. Or that's how he appears, at least. “Like, Camelot Merlin? The Merlin with the long white beard and the pointy hat and the staff and-”

“Is that really the only version of me that people talk about?” Merlin groans, covering his face with a hand, more exasperated than anything. “I mean, yes, I guess I’m an old man and I do use a spell to look like one _some_ times, but this is what I look like by default!” He gestures to all of himself with a weak flourish that ends up being very underwhelming.

Max stares at Merlin like he's the farthest thing from natural - and he wouldn't be wrong, either.

“Seriously!” Merlin insists, assuming that _that_ must be the reason why Max could be staring at him like that, with his mouth halfway open and an expression of complete incredulity. “Immortality also comes with eternal youth, apparently. I might be hundreds of years old, but not once have I so much as gotten a single wrinkle, let alone grown a long white beard. Well,” he thinks on that for a moment, “maybe I’ve had a beard in the past, but not a long one, and certainly not white.”

Max still says nothing.

“Max? You all right?”

Max probably looks the furthest thing from all right, but at least he seems to snap out of whatever it is he's fallen into.

“Sorry, it’s just – you mean you’re _the_ Merlin?" he says again, probably still wondering if he's suddenly got a load of wax clogging his ears. "That’s not possible. You sure you're not pulling my leg? As in, the really famous one who’s had ten different movies and cartoons and a trillion books about him? You’re _that_ Merlin?”

“Yep.”

“Not just some poor bloke who got saddled with the same name.”

“Nope.”

"I'm not sure I believe you."

With a shake of his head, Merlin drops his hand from his face and locks eyes with Max and says, clear as day, “You're right, I wouldn't expect you to believe me. But if you want the truth, this is it: My name is Merlin Ambrosius, and a very long time ago, I lived in the kingdom of Camelot under the reign of King Arthur Pendragon. Before that, it was King Uther -which was a timeI prefer not to think about much. I lived as the manservant to Arthur until the day he... fell from power."

"Died, you mean."

Merlin ignores the interruption. "I’m also the one responsible for the magic that helped build Stonehenge, in case you were wondering.”

A very pregnant pause follows.

It’s so quiet for a minute that they can both hear the running of the washing machine two rooms away, and the _drip-drip_ of water from the kitchen sink. Then, Max leans forward in his chair, and he’s got that _look_ in his eyes, and says, “Mate, you need to tell me _everything_. Right bloody now.”

“...Can’t it wait until my head stops spinning?” Merlin groans, rubbing his temples.

“Absolutely fucking not. No effing way. You don’t just drop something like that and expect to walk away without ten thousand questions! Oi, d’you hear me?”

Merlin huffs out a helpless sigh. “Why this?” he moans.

“Oh _boohoo_. You really thought you were getting off that easy? I have questions. _Questions,_ Emmet. Or – or Merlin, I guess? Jesus. I don’t even know what to do with this information.” His eyes go wide. “I mean, I promise I won’t tell or anything, but if forgive me for having a freak out because you’re… you’re a goddamn legend, mate. If you’re telling the truth, I mean.”

“’M really not a legend…” Merlin grumbles under his breath. “Can’t we save the questions until tomorrow? Please?”

“Nope. You’re sitting this one out until my say so.” Max gives Merlin a look so severe that Merlin has no choice but to remain rooted to the sofa, or gods have mercy on him. Max has that glimmer of mischief in his eye.  “I’d like to hear more about the twenties, actually. I’ve got a history paper due in a week. Mind helping a mate out?”

“I would mind less if I had a glass of water and five more hours of sleep.”

Max fumes. “You're no fun! Really?"

"Really."

"Most famous bloody wizard in all of _history_ is _my_ roommate, and I can’t even get him bloody sober long enough to talk about the nineteen twenties,” he grumbles to himself.

“You know I can hear you.”

“Good. Now, tell me everything. And start at the beginning.”

**::{}{}{}::**

Merlin has to cut out quite a bit, but even so, they end up sitting there for a little over four hours, with Max getting up from time to time to run to the loo or bring them back a drink of water. Merlin isn’t affected by the brief interruptions. They give him more time to think. And also recover from his raging hangover.

“The months turned into years, and I expected to wait a great deal of them. Fifty, maybe, at least at first,” he explains, even as his throat starts to burn and his voice is run ragged. “That was the best-case scenario in my head. But after those fifty years were up, I wasn’t sure how long it would be anymore. Sixty years went by. Nothing. Then my first century without him came and went, I counted each day, for a _hundred_ _years_ , and he didn’t come.”

Max is a great listener throughout the entire thing, nodding in all the right places and giving all the right reactions, except for the bit when Merlin talks about his killing Morgana, and Merlin’s choice to leave some of Arthur’s “doppelgangers” behind. He doesn’t interrupt, but he does squirrel away the information to ask about later.

“I kept on hoping, though. I waited for the next fifty year mark, then the next hundred. By the third century, I was really starting to think it wasn’t worth it. Five hundred, and it _wasn’t_ worth it at all. I gave up.”

“You didn’t.” Max seems to have a sort of sixth sense when it comes to Merlin’s self-doubt. He wouldn’t believe that Merlin would give up on _any_ thing. He’s still trying to wrap his head around Merlin’s lapse in sobriety after three months of absolutely zero problems.

“I did. I stopped looking for him. I began to focus on other things. Education, travel, helping others; because if I couldn’t die and end the waiting, what was I meant to do?” The implication hits Max like a ton of bricks. But when he opens his mouth to respond, Merlin holds up a hand and keeps going. “All I could think was that, with all my abilities, I should at least be able to help other people.” He runs a hand down his face, weary. “There’s enough suffering in the world without another self-pitying sorcerer to screw things up. I wanted to help instead of harm.”

“Hmm” Max nods in agreement. Of course, he can’t exactly sympathize, but he’s taken everything in stride thus far. He can, at the very least, try to understand what Merlin has had to go through. “I just one question, before you go on” he cuts in after the halfway mark of the fourth hour.

“What, not going to ask if I shagged Queen Victoria, are you?” Merlin asks with a smirk, something by way of an attempt to lighten the mood. It seems to work, because Max looks flabbergasted. “Because I’ve had someone ask me that before.”

“I wasn’t…” Max’s brow scrunches together while he takes in what Merlin’s just said. “Um… _did_ you?” He can’t help it. _Any_ one would be curious to know, Merlin walked right into that one.

“ _No_ , for gods’ sakes!” Merlin’s posture is defensive, but the façade cracks once he starts laughing. Max joins in, too. It’s just too ridiculous.

This whole _thing_ is just too ridiculous.

“Well I had to check!” Max holds up his hands, then brings them down to hold his stomach when he can’t stop laughing. “Bloody hell, you really had me going there, mate!” It takes him a few more minutes to calm down, but he manages it. “Sorry, sorry” he gasps after the last fit of laughter subsides.

Merlin shrugs. “Honestly? It probably wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve done. What was the question you wanted to ask me?” He sits up from the crummy sofa while Max stands from his chair and starts to pace. His feet make muffled noises while he steps across the shag carpet. They really need to refurnish this flat.

Max gives himself a moment’s pause to formulate his question, then asks, "What's your real age, then?"

"Little over twelve hundred” Merlin answers easily enough.

" _Damn_ ," Max murmurs, and his pacing comes to an abrupt halt. He gapes.  "So that must mean…"

"Yes, I know, It means I was around for all the important moments in history, including the Crusades – which uh, sucked, by the way - the French Revolution, the two World Wars, the Beatles, and all that jazz, yeah. I was there for all of it.” Merlin shrugs, then adds, “You’re the history buff here. I’m sure you’re itching to ask a few more questions."

 

Max looks like he’s seriously considering it, but then he shakes his head. "Well sure, but, wow....” he gives Merlin a sly look. “Dermatologists must _hate_ you."

His cheeky, shit-eating grin gets wiped clean off when a hard sofa cushion comes sailing towards him of its own accord, and smacks a bullseye square in Max’s face.

"Oi!” Max splutters, throwing up his arms to shield himself, just in case another enchanted couch missile comes flying his way. “C'mon, at least I didn't go screaming to the authorities when you told me you had magic! I could've easily reported you as clinically insane and unfit for cohabitation."

"True” Merlin nods pensively, "but I could have done the very same thing to _you_ if you’d been the first one to tell me about _your_ magic.”

“Yeah, but you’re not just a normal bloke who thinks magic is about as make-believe as unicorns.”

Merlin almost stops Max’s rant just to point out that unicorns are more real than he thinks, but the only thing he says is, “Well, you need me to pay your rent more than you need to stay away from other sorcerers. Just be grateful it was me who found you, and not some magic-wielding twat with a power complex."

 

“…Touché.”

The two share a few minutes of companionable silence. Their tea went cold hours ago, but the mugs remain on the coffee table, with Max’s mug still untouched. He’s more of a coffee person.

Merlin is the first to move, stretching his arms and cracking his neck loudly.

“Well. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

Max stifles a yawn of his own, but before Merlin can leave the room, Max wags a stern finger and says, “Go ahead and sleep, but don’t go thinking this interrogation is over, you hear?”

Merlin smiles. He feels a bit drained of energy, but he also feels like a weight’s been lifted from his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I know.” 

**::{}{}{}::**

The next morning Max sidles into the kitchenette wearing nothing but Star Trek boxers and a T-shirt with the image of an open, red-lipped mouth and bearing the logo _The Stones._

He pads across the linoleum-tiled floor, sleepily rubbing at his eyes and doing a zombie-walk towards the coffee maker without even having to look where he’s going.

Merlin, on the other hand, has opted for tea. Sober again, and this time he’ll be keeping it that way.

His coffee days, he thinks with a mournful sigh, are behind him.

World War II killed any and all further enjoyment of even a simple, black coffee with sugar. He watches with amusement while Max dumps what must be at least half a pound of sugar into his mug. Like the seasoned veteran he is, Merlin rolls his eyes and sips at his tea – jasmine with chamomile.

He would never admit it, but he’s become something of a tea snob ever since the Second World War. Their pantry is stocked out the wazoo with fragrant boxes of PG Tips and Twinings, probably enough to entertain a small army for a decade or so. Merlin hoards it like it’s fine wine, only… there’s probably less chance of getting hungover from a cup of Celestial Seasonings Berry Zinger medley. Probably.

Despite the cold weather, the sun is shining uncharacteristically bright outside for a February day in London. Merlin hears Max’s overly dramatic sigh, and knows that he’s got another heart-to-heart to look forward to, if his skills in reading expressions are anything to go by.

Sure enough, not a minute later Max makes his way over to the sink to grab a spoon, and says, “So Merlin… I also feel like I need to tell you some things.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I mean, about my life and all. You told me a ton about yourself last night, and a lot of it was kind of insanely personal. You’ve got my respect. That, and there’s also the fact that you’re an uber-famous thousand-year-old wizard who can magic himself a white beard whenever he wants. I feel like it’s only fair I share some stuff about myself, yeah?”

Merlin frowns. “Max, I _chose_ to tell you what I did. If I didn't want to, I wouldn't have. You shouldn’t feel like you have to tell me anything. Okay?”

“Yeah yeah, I know, but I want to. I do. Really.” Max plucks at a nonexistent piece of lint on his shirtsleeve and clasps his other hand more firmly around his Star Trek mug. Merlin can barely contain a snort of amusement at how much Max treasures that thing. It’s a lot like Merlin and his scarf. He just can’t seem to part with it.

He nods over his mug of tea and gestures to the chair in front of him at the kitchen table. “Knock yourself out, mate. Share what you feel comfortable sharing. But I won’t force you to.”

Max accepts the offer to sit – even though he doesn’t really need permission to sit in his own chair – and takes a breath. He blows on his coffee to cool it down before his brow knits together. “Erm… Before I start bleeding my heart out to you though, I do have another question. About something you mentioned yesterday. I’m sure I’ll have more, but I’ll hold off until later.”

“And what’s that?” Merlin sighs. Max really needs to learn how to get to the point. He’s brilliant and all, but sometimes he can be a little thick.

“What are these ‘Judges,’ really? The _i giudici._ Like, Jehovah’s Witnesses or some shite like that?”

Not the question Merlin was expecting, but then, he’s slowly begun to realize that it’s never what he’s expecting when it comes to Max. “Try Jehovah’s Witnesses on steroids after reading Marx’s _Communist Manifesto_ , but if the Communist Manifesto was the _Neo-Druidism Manifesto_.”

“…Gotcha.” Max doesn’t look as perturbed by that bit of news as he does by the fact that there’s only half a mug of coffee left, so he gets up to make more. All that’s left in the coffee pot are the leftover dregs from last night. Oh, right, he’d forgotten to put fresh coffee beans in.

“Marx was an arsehole, by the way. I met him once.”

“You _met_ Karl Marx?!” Max nearly drops his limited edition Star Trek ceramic coffee mug, but fumblingly saves it in the nick of time.

Merlin smirks into his own mug and makes a mental note to find Max a new obsession. Preferably soon. He’s getting tired of finding boxers that say _U.S.S. Enterprise_ on the bum, accidentally mixed in with all the rest of his laundry. “Briefly. Bumped into him before he was meant to give a speech at a rally. That was before he became popular, though.”

“ _Shite.”_ Max stares at Merlin with something like awe. Merlin’s heart clenches painfully. Max reminds him of Will – Ealdor Will, not playwright Will – like crazy. _“_ And here I was thinking you’d gotten the short-end of immortality stick and went through life never meeting anyone interesting.”

“Well, like I said, Marx was an arse. Bloody wish I hadn’t met him, I really do. Also, you’re wearing my shirt, mate” Merlin points out with an eyebrow raised.

Max doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. “Can you blame me?” He holds up a hand and pouts, like he’s does absolutely nothing wrong. “It’s the _Stones._ I’ll return it as soon as I’m done with it!”

Merlin puffs out his cheeks and puts his tea down. “ _Oh_ no, you are not going to be one of _those_ roommates. You stay out of my things, and I keep out of yours, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure thing.”

Merlin is not convinced.

“So, I thought I might tell you about my family. I mean, my real family. Not the foster family.”

It’s a turn that Merlin, once again, is not expecting. “Oh… Do you remember them well?”

Max shakes his head. “Not really. But I know how much my mother loved me. Which was why she put me up for adoption.”

Max never really talked about his parents. Just that his father had left his mother after a year-long relationship, and Max still wasn’t sure which of his parents had passed down the magic gene. But after the incident at St. Joan’s, it was as if something had switched on in Max’s head. Just like that, he was ready to talk.

He explains that his mother and father’s relationship hadn’t lasted. The man left before he even knew about Max or the pregnancy.

“My mother had issues that couldn’t be explained by her psychiatrist, mostly about her nightmares and weird visions and things, and in the end, I was put up for adoption for my own sake as well as hers. My magic began to show in my first year, about a month after I was brought to my first foster home. I guess my mother didn’t know I would turn out the way I did, so she must not have known everything about my father.”

“So you think your father was a sorcerer?” Merlin asks quietly.

“I think _one_ of my parents had magic, or had some… I dunno, some sort of gene that could be passed down with the possibility of a kid being born with magic. My theory is that it was my father who had magic, not my mum. If she’d had magic, I think she would have assumed her child would be the same, and kept me with her to protect me. Anyway, after my first year in the system, that was when things got really strange.”

Merlin’s silence is all the encouragement Max needs to continue.

“Accidents would happen around me – small things at first, like cupboards would open of their own accord and dishes would fall to the floor, but never break.”

Merlin fondly remembers being told similar stories about his magic, how it would go bonkers when he was just a baby, driving his poor mother mad with worry.

“My caretakers – and there were multiple – would find me awake in the middle of the night, the mobile above my bed spinning around. They wondered how I’d got the thing to move on its own like that, but they assumed I had to be climbing up the side of the crib or something and giving it a push before getting back in bed before anyone came to check in. Harmless for the most part, but strange.”

Max explains how he had learned to control his magic early on, when he was taken to a second foster home two years after his birth. All things considered, he’d fared relatively well.

“I stayed there ‘til I was twelve, and that was when the accident happened.”

“Accident?” Merlin forgets his mug of tea and leaves it to cool on the table. Max nods; His eyes turn a little unfocused. Someone from the flat across the hall slams their door, startling them both for a second. Max’s shoulders heave.

“It started out as a prank,” Max whispers, “I finally decided I needed to tell _someone_ about my secret, y’know? Shit like that, it eats away at you. And don’t tell me that it don’t, ‘cause it does” he points an accusing finger Merlin’s way, but Merlin only nods, understanding completely. “I trusted my best friend enough with my secret. His name was Murphy, and Murphy… well, Murphy had a big mouth. Real big. Looking back, I still dunno why I ever trusted Murphy with such a big thing like that.”

“So you told Murphy. Then what happened?” Merlin coaxes. Max cradles his mug of coffee and steels himself.

“Things took a turn for the worst. I liked to prank the kids at the orphanage, back in the day. Murphy and I were a tag team. But one day I decided to pull one over on him instead, just for the hell of it. Murphy was locked in the loo that had no working pipes or ventilation – this was after a nasty squabble we’d had the day before. Hell bent on being let out of there, Murphy threatened to tell everyone my secret. Not knowing what else to do, I… I used magic to keep the door locked – but then I didn’t know how to get it open again. I panicked. I couldn’t control what I was doing.”

Merlin keeps his mouth shut tight. His stomach twists in anticipation for the next part of the story.

“So there was Murphy, trapped in the loo and _furious_ that he didn’t have the upper hand, and he forced open the tiny window behind the sink, and managed to climb out.”

The color leaves Max’s face and he sets his coffee down on the table next to Merlin’s tea.

“Only, there wasn’t anything outside the window to land on. Not unless you counted the solid ground two stories down.”

Merlin holds his breath.

“He didn’t survive the fall” Max’s voice cracks on the last word. “And I never told anyone else about my magic. I kept it to myself, and I went about my life. It’s hard. Really hard. But I’ve learned to live with it.”

He tells Merlin about his life at the next foster home he got dumped into at age twelve.

“A few weeks after I turned thirteen, a nice couple came in, looking to adopt.”

They’d taken one look at Max, and fallen in love. And that was that.

“They’ve been brilliant, my foster parents. I called them mum and dad, and I loved them like I would have loved my real parents. They loved me right back. But they’ve come to realize that I’ve always been pretty independent; they’re happy enough to let me fend for myself while I go to uni. They’re good people.”

Max doesn’t speak much of his real parents, but he’s never seemed angry or resentful towards his nameless, faceless father who’d broken off the relationship with his real mother. The bloke couldn’t have known about the child, anyway. He left before there was so much as a baby bump to show for their time spent together.

Max was introverted and more keen to get good grades than he was to go to parties and get himself wasted. He wants a bright future. Merlin admires his drive and ambition.

“All I remember of my mother was her laugh. I know she had a beautiful laugh. The folks at the social workers’ office gave me a photograph of her. She was beautiful, and I know she had the best intentions when she left me. I wish I’d gotten to meet her, but all the same I can’t really blame her for not wanting to deal with a child when she wasn’t even married. You know how it was then” he waves a hand around and almost spills half the contents of his coffee mug. “People _still_ frown upon unwed mothers.”

“What was your mother’s name?” asks Merlin gently, curious but not wanting to pry too deeply into Max’s personal background.

Max smiles to himself. “Even her name was beautiful,” he sighs softly, “It was Fionna. She had this long blonde hair, and hazel eyes like mine.”

Fionna. Why does that name ring a bell for Merlin?

“I don’t think she was magic – although maybe the weird dreams she was having were a sign of _something_.” He mulls the thought over and sips at his coffee while Merlin’s brow knits together.

It comes back to him then, the last time he met someone named Fionna. Ice starts to settle in his gut. “Max… what was Fionna’s last name?”

“Donoghue, I think. Why?”

The hairs on Merlin’s arms and back of his neck stand on end.

Merlin had known a Fionna Donoghue. He had known her very well.

But hearing news about her, especially in this way, is heart-shattering. Fionna, in the psychiatric ward? Fionna, pregnant with a child without someone by her side?

Fionna, raising the child on her own. And Max… Max is Fionna’s kid. Which means…

He tries to swallow, but his mouth has gone dry. “Do you have the picture of her still?” he rasps out. His voice sounds wrong in his throat. Max gives him a funny look, but pulls his wallet from the pocket of his jeans and rifles through a couple of bills and receipts, before plucking out a battered, black and white photograph of a smiling woman. He looks at it fondly before sliding it across the table towards Merlin, who takes one look at the photo and pales.

His fears are confirmed.

That’s Fionna, all right. Stunning as she always was. He remembers saying his goodbyes to her nearly twenty years ago.

Make that twenty-one years ago.

He looks up at Max, face ashen. Sweat beads on his palms and his hand shakes when he slides the photograph back across the coffee table towards the person he _thought_ was just his roommate and his friend.

But there can be no doubt about it. Merlin has a son. _Max_ is his son.

Merlin is a father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, it's been forever; this is by far the longest chapter I've written so far. Thank you so much again to everyone who puts up with my ridiculous lag in updates! You guys are what keep me going, I appreciate it so much.


	10. The Son Also Shines

There’s nothing to question.

Merlin is a _father._ The uncanny resemblance, the age.

And then there’s Max’s mother, obviously. The question is, _how_?

Merlin had never planned on having kids – not once. He’d made sure of it, and he’d made sure of it for _very_ good reasons: It wouldn’t be fair to the mother, and it wouldn’t be fair to the child. The mother would need someone to help care for the kid, and what would that kid think if they grew up with the knowledge that their father had left them? Merlin was not a cruel man; he wouldn’t do that to a child. Not on purpose, anyway.

But he’d done it.

In any relationship he was a part of – and there really weren’t as many as some might assume from a thirteen hundred-year-old man – he used magic to make sure a kid was never conceived. It was like a sorcerer’s Old World form of birth control.

…Well, all right, there was birth control in the 1960s. That was when it was really refined more, put into pharmacies and sold instead of people relying on home style contraceptives that were sometimes only twenty percent effective and sometimes less so. And often incredibly dangerous. And Merlin had known that Fionna, as a natural worrier, took birth control. Was religious about taking it exactly on time, and despite her and Merlin’s year-long… whatever it was, no child had ever come to be. Merlin hadn’t even _thought_ to use magic with her. Just one of those things.

He supposes he could have been a bit smarter.

Because just like all things, the contraceptives of the time had been flawed. Like, _clearly_. And Merlin and Fionna’s relationship had been so brief, cut short because Merlin felt himself being pulled to Vietnam. He could help more people there because gods, did they need all the help they could get. And another one of Arthur’s… whatever they were, he had met another one of them on the war front, working once again as an army medic. That one bit the dust within the first three months of fighting, thanks to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Napalm. Another one of good old Satan’s inventions.

Merlin never heard from Fionna after that. Not one letter.

He assumed that she’d gotten over whatever it was they had, and gone on to live her life. Maybe settled down with a husband and had kids of their own. She never sent him any letters about a child, or about anything. Why hadn’t she?

Another thought strikes Merlin at the same time: He has to tell Max.

He can’t _not_ tell him; that would be just as unfair as Gaius not telling Merlin about Balinor. What would Max do, if he had to find out from someone other than Merlin himself? He would _not_ have repeats of the past – keeping secrets until they did more harm than good?

He can’t do that. He owes it to his… his son _,_ to tell him the truth.

But first, he really needs another cup of tea.

A little unsteady on his legs, Merlin gets up from the kitchen table and heads for the stove, where the kettle still has some water left in it. Just to make sure it’s hot, he waves a hand clumsily at the stove, but he miscalculates his movements and ends up blasting a spout of hot flames from beneath the kettle. The metal pot whines and whistles indignantly.

“Merlin?” Max frowns and watches from the sitting room as the man quickly waves his hands again, quelling the angry flames. When Merlin doesn't answer, he gets up from the sofa and, a little unsure, enters the kitchenette. “You all right?” he hedges.

Merlin braces his hands over the sink and nods, working on controlling himself before he does something far worse than burning the kitchen down.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right.” No, no he is not all right. He is far from all right. He’s a father _._ Perhaps he's finally gone mad.

The water is plenty hot for tea, but just as suddenly as he’d gotten up Merlin turns around and sits back down at the table without pouring himself anything, looks down at his own hands resting on the tabletop. With an uncomfortable tap of a finger against the side of his mug, Max sits across from Merlin. He leans forward, trying to catch Merlin’s eye. And fails.

“You gonna take the kettle off, or shall I?”

Merlin makes a noncommittal noise and pinches the bridge of his nose. Max huffs impatiently and stands up, the sound of wood scraping against linoleum setting Merlin’s teeth on edge. With the stove turned off and the kettle spouting steam, Max takes up his seat once more. “Right then. Spill,” he says.

“Did they ever tell you anything about your real father?” Merlin asks quietly, “Your foster parents?”

Max’s frown grows deeper. “What?”

Merlin rucks both his hands up through his already unkempt bedhead, then attempts to smooth the dark waves back out, with no luck. Max's hair isn't much different.

Max puts his elbows on the table and leans over his coffee mug. “Why are you asking about my father?”

Merlin can’t take it. He lets his hands drop to the table and lifts his head. His eyes are wide and he feels like he’s completely vulnerable, meeting Max’s gaze with apprehension. Maybe even fear.

Max takes one look at Merlin’s expression and opens his mouth, then shuts it again, shaking his head. He leans back away from Merlin, slowly sliding his arms off the table. “…Merlin, what are you thinking?”

“I’ve been around for a long time, Max,” his own voice feels disjointed, separate from the rest of his body. “I don’t want you to bug out when I tell you this.”

“You see me going anywhere?”

“Max, how do I put this?” He thinks maybe it would be best to start with the obvious. “There was a time when I knew your mother.”

Max seems to catch the subtext almost immediately.

“You mean you _knew_ my mother.”

“…Yes.”

With that comes even more subtext – which is when it dawns on Max, what Merlin is actually implying. “No, you don’t think… You wouldn’t think that _you…”_ He laughs nervously, brow knitted together as a crease appears on his forehead, trying to work something out internally. “This is a joke, right? You’re joking. You couldn’t…” But even as he says it, the expression of denial falters, and he trails off.

“It adds up, Max,” Merlin says, as gentle as if he were coaxing a child to come out from a hiding place. The younger man sits motionless. “I knew Fionna, twenty years ago. Twenty- _one_ years ago, actually.”

“No,” Max inhales sharply, slamming a fist down on the table, disturbing his mug of coffee. “Stop, just stop. You're lying, you couldn’t have, you’re not like that….”

“We were together for a year,” Merlin plows forward, determined to say it before he loses his chance. “I’d thought that we were being safe enough, but….” He swallows. His throat’s gone dry again. “Not as safe as we could have been? And then she never sent word about a child after I left. When I was with her, everything felt like it was happening so fast, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Max’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. “But you wouldn’t have _left_ her if-”

“If I had known. But I didn’t,” says Merlin, absolutely refusing to let Max think he would _willingly_ abandon Fionna if he'd known she had been with child. He has to be patient. If he doesn’t give Max some time for it to sink in, Merlin knows he might just create more problems where there don’t need to be.... He can’t lose Max when he’s only _just_ gotten to know him. “I had no idea that Fionna was with child when I left--”

“Why _did_ you leave?” Max croaks. Merlin studies his face; Max’s eyes are flinty, wet around the edges, but hazel in color just like his mother’s. The bags under his eyes hang heavily and Merlin’s wonders when the kid last got any sleep at all, considering how hard he’s been working lately. Merlin really does regret not having stayed with Fionna when he should have- he should have been _there_ for her.

Merlin looks down at his hands and sighs heavily. “It’s… hard to explain.”

“Well then, you’d better try your damnedest, because I’m not taking that bollocks for an answer.” Max’s nose is all scrunched up and he sniffs, bringing his coffee to his lips. He doesn’t sip, just clings to the warmth and the familiar smell, like it might keep him calm down enough that he doesn’t raise his voice louder than thirty decibels. “It’s one thing to expect me to believe that you’re _Merlin_ from _Camelot_ and all that shite, but this… this is too much. It’s too much. Just… explain. Please.”

With a nod, Merlin replies, “Fair enough.” He pauses for a breath, muddling through his thoughts in search of a good way to explain this whole mess to Max.

He can’t lie, that’s out of the question, so as ridiculous as the truth may sound, Merlin’s going to stick to the facts. “There’s this thing that happens to me. In a word, it’s this… I don’t know, a Pull, I call it. Over the centuries, I’ve been feeling this Pull to just _be_ somewhere, and when I get to that place, there’s always someone waiting for me. Someone who just fits into my life, treats me like a friend, someone I can be in the company of and feel like… like Arthur is there, watching over me. And the people I come to care for.”

“You mean King Arthur.” The realization seeps into Max’s sullen face. Merlin’s drunken rant from yesterday’s incident is starting to make a bit more sense.

_Arthur would be ashamed of me._

“Yeah. King Arthur.” Merlin winces. “Every person I’ve met thanks to this Pull? They’ve all been similar to Arthur, whether it’s how they look, or how their personalities reflect or what have you. My magic can feel it every time, the _connection_ they have to Arthur in some way, and some are stronger than others. I’ve always felt like Arthur was sending these people down to keep me company so that I wouldn’t be so alone in the world. I – and maybe it’s wishful thinking, considering each of those people, erm, suffered from nightmares after I left and probably wouldn’t want anything to do with me ever again… but they got me through.”

Max remains quiet for a moment, clearly mulling it all over.

Outside, the sun rises higher in the sky. It’s 9 a.m. on a Saturday, and for a February morning, it’s warm. The kitchenette is closed-in and cozy, and the shades have been pulled open to let in sunlight. The soft _tap-tapping_ of the ever-leaky sink is the only noise in the room, until Max speaks up again.

“Was my mother one of them?” he asks. His voice is soft, throat still scratchy from raising his voice yesterday.

Exhaling softly, Merlin shakes his head and says, “No.”

“But you loved her.”

“I did,” Merlin says truthfully, “But there was no denying I had to leave. It isn’t safe for me to be around people – mortals – for too long. If someone found out who I was, _what_ I was…”

“What?” Max asks, and he really does sound like he’s trying to understand. He’s still in his pjs; stolen t-shirt, Star Trek boxer shorts and all, and wearing a gravely serious expression; the whole thing would be tremendously funny. Except for the fact that it, plain and simple, is not.

Max is obviously a little _irked_.

Not that he doesn’t have every right to be.

“It wouldn’t end well.” Merlin leaves it at that. "There are people out there... other magic users, people who have studied the old legends or been a part of them themselves. Not everyone is on my side. I've made enemies."

“Okay, right. So, my father is a thirteen hundred-year-old warlock – scratch that, my father is _Merlin._ As in, _the_ Merlin. Making me the son of Merlin. _The_ Merlin.” It’s evident that Max tends to get a little redundant when he’s trying to make sense of things.

“Good to know my only child’s got at least half a brain,” Merlin mutters. Max fucking _better be_ his only child. But he can’t stop the fuzzy feeling wrapping around his heart, making him all warm inside. He has a _child._ He's downright gutted that he wasn’t able to watch this kid grow into the young adult he is now, but Max is still his son. _His_ son. Merlin has a family – a living family.

“I mean, I’m right cross that you left my mum and started this whole foster home life for me. No offense, but fuck you, mate.” Max crosses his arms, glaring at Merlin resolutely from across the pathetically small breakfast table.

Merlin isn’t upset by the remark at all. In fact, all he says is, “Pretty sure I deserve worse.”

Max doesn’t look like he disagrees. “And also, I am _not_ going to call you dad. That is a big, stinking ‘No’ right there.”

Merlin holds up his hands. “I’m not asking you to – in fact, please don’t.” He suppresses a shudder, like the thought of being called “dad” or “da” or even “father” is just too much for him to handle. Which it sort of is. “Merlin is more than fine by me. But while we’re sitting here, can we get some things sorted, if it’s not too much to ask?”

Max’s brow furrows. “Depends on what you’re asking.”

“Well firstly, if I’m going to continue living with you, you really need to start behaving like the proper roommate.”

“I’m sorry?” Max inclines his head, like he might not have heard correctly.

“Yes, you heard me. I’m done with coming home and finding that the food is all gone, there’s dirty laundry on the floor, dishes in the sink, and the rubbish hasn’t been taken out - on days when it is _not_ my turn to do said chores. I do my part, and I expect you to do the same. It’s just good manners.”

Throwing up his hands like this is the argument of the century, Max groans, “Oh but of _course_. That’s just brilliant, my roommate’s a grouchy old wizard-warlock-whatever who wants to play the _adult_. I find my father – my sodding _father_ after twenty-one years of nothing and nobody – and he expects me to be the perfect kid. Well, I got news for you-”

“Allow me to rephrase,” Merlin interrupts, raising an eyebrow worthy of even old Gaius’s approval, “You clean up your things when I ask you to, and I’ll help you with your magic.”

“You’ll… what?” That grabs Max’s attention. Just as Merlin had planned.

“I s’pose I may never have gotten to watch you grow up or live through your childhood, and I regret that enormously. But you’re still a kid, especially compared to me. And considering how long I’ve had to deal with people – yes, I _deal_ with them – I know when a fight’s brewing. I know when someone’s about to blow a fuse or shout their head off like you’re about to do,” Merlin points out, “which is fine and I don’t blame you at all, seriously.” He holds up his hands to make his point.

“I wasn’t going to shout,” Max mutters crossly, if not being entirely convincing about it. Then after a pause, he scrubs at his cheeks with the balls of his hands and says, “…I am angry, though. I mean, it’s got less to do with _you,_ I think, and more to do with me not putting it together sooner. If I had never brought up my family, maybe…”

Maybe neither of them would have ever known. That they were family, _are_ family.

Max would never have known his real family – which is what Merlin _is._ Max has a real, tangible human being that he can call his, that he can consider his blood. His kin.

...What _if_ they’d never figured it out? Merlin supposes that Max would still be going to university like he is now; he’d have a job, he’d have a roommate, and he’d still have his foster parents.

And he would never have someone to mentor him in harnessing his abilities. Merlin might be a little late to the game, sure, but it isn’t a completely lost cause. Merlin doubts that Max would pass up an offer to learn control. Especially considering the tragedies he had to live through during his childhood.

“My parents… my foster parents I mean, they’ve been getting a bit distant now and again, these days,” Max stares numbly at his coffee.  “Even when I go back to their flat for a visit. They call once a month, maybe, and my mum e-mails me every other week at least. Think they've hit another rough patch with work and all. I know how much they love me, like any parent would love their son – it’s that unconditional sort of thing. But they’ve just been getting distant. I dunno.” He shrugs. “It’s like they’re just always too busy for the child they chose to adopt, and they only live a mile away," he bites his lip, losing himself in the thought, murmuring, "It’s been a strange year.” Taking a tentative sip from his coffee, he adds moment later, “I’ve been using my magic even less since last December. I can hardly remember how to make a teacup float in midair now. I used to be _great_ at that!”

“And do they know?” Merlin hesitates, wondering if he should just avoid the touchy subject of magic. “About…?”

“My magic?” Max immediately perks up. “Oh yeah, they’ve known for ages. Since maybe the first month I started living with ‘em. I’ve gotta hand it to them, they took it pretty well. Mum ended up writing up a list of rules about the ‘Do’s and Don’ts of magic,’ like not to set the cat’s tail on fire, things like that.”

Merlin wonders if that particular rule has been spawned from a prior event where some poor cat’s tail had, in fact, been set on fire. He doesn’t ask.

“Dad bought me all sorts of storybooks about wizards and things, even though I was thirteen and way too old for storybooks.” Merlin rolls his eyes but holds his tongue. “There were a few about you, even.” Max throws the last sentence out there like a peace offering, silently begging the question, _Do you trust that I’ll forgive you if you just give me some time?_

Merlin smiles inwardly, and cants his head forward in the smallest of nods.

“But somehow they never really felt like home, my foster parents. Y’know?” Max shrugs, like it’s not a big deal. But that _is_ a big deal. Not having someone to call home? That can have repercussions.

And, if given enough time, it can drive a person mad with loneliness. Max is lucky he turned out as well as he did. “But you, Merlin?”

Merlin looks up from his tea. “Me?”

Max nods. “You seem all right, I suppose.”

Snorting, Merlin fiddles with the handle of his mug, staring out the singular window of the kitchenette. “I would hope I’m at least ‘ _all right.’_ ” He answers. “I am glad you still want me around, at least.” Then he pauses, looking back to Max, his expression darkening for a second. “You… do still want me around, right?”

To Merlin’s relief, Max beams at him. “Well, yeah. I mean, I am still peeved with you, don’t get me wrong, but of course I still want you around.”

“I’m glad.”

“Besides, s’not every day you find out your dad’s a famous wizard who can help you ace your history class.”

Merlin wouldn’t have expected anything less. “Not what I meant, but I’ll take it.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you have some really _brilliant_ stories, you have no idea how many more questions I have for you,” Max starts to gush, prattling on about how dull some of his history lessons have been, and what an ace history professor Merlin would make. Merlin refuses to become a professor again, but he listens as Max jabbers on.

“Tell you what,” Max says over his third cup of coffee, “you help a mate out with a history paper, and I might even start talking to you again.”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Max, you’re talking to me right now.”

“So, you’ll help me then?” The forgiveness is there, in Max’s voice as well as in his eyes. Not all hope is lost after all.

Merlin’s shoulders slump in relief. He hadn’t even realized how tense he’d been before.

“You fit into my life like a glove, from the moment I met you.” Max doesn’t sound like he’s being sarcastic, which is a good sign. “To be honest, I think I started considering you as family the minute you fixed my Star Trek mug with magic two and a half months ago, then told me, ‘there’s nothing weird about us. Our magic is a gift, not something we have to hide.’” He throws Merlin a warm smile, raising his mug in a toast. “You’ve been giving me fatherly advice before I even realized what it was, I think.”

Merlin doesn’t know what to say, nor can he believe that Max had really listened when Merlin told him that his magic was a gift. And he remembered. It’s like… like a hole in Merlin’s chest that he didn’t even know was there has been filled up.

It’s true, he never got to have _kids_ kids, but he does have a twenty-one year-old son, a son who doesn’t entirely hate him for the way his life in the system turned out. And that’s a start.

**::{}{}{}::**

After a breakfast of eggs on toast – with Max burning the first batch of eggs when Merlin tries to show him how to work the stove by magic – the two of them move to the sitting room. There’s obviously a ton that still needs to be discussed. Like where to go from here.

Max is all for Merlin’s idea of mentoring. He just doesn’t know how to tell his parents about all this – or even if he should. Merlin had thought it a better idea for Max to decide for himself, but it’s a hard decision to make.

Could Max’s foster parents accept it as easily as Max had, or would they feel threatened that Merlin was trying (not that he was) to steer Max away from them?

"Imagine that... huh." Max swirls the rest of his drink around in his Star Trek mug. Merlin eyes the glossy ceramic, popping with the logo’s bright blue against a black, star-covered background. Of course, his son would be a Trekkie… or whatever they call themselves. Merlin was never really much of a fan, as he despised the special effects and knew that, given the chance, he could have done a far better job if he ever had the chance to work on set. 

But he likes the turn that science fiction has taken in television. _Doctor Who_ , now that was a show. He doesn’t even mind some of the show’s ghastly special effects.

"What?” he asks, seeing the way Max is musing over a notebook but not actually writing anything down. The rest of Max’s school supplies lay scattered next to the La-Z-Boy on the carpet. That will have to be the first thing on his list of “Things to Clean Up Before Merlin Turns Max Into a Toad.”

"Well think about it, what are the odds that I, a magic user, would end up having the great wizard Merlin as a roommate, and then it just so happens that he's also my father?" Max looks pointedly at Merlin, who chuckles, marveling at the idea. "I put an ad in the paper for a roommate, and he just pops up out of nowhere and moves in. That's one hell of a coincidence.”

Merlin's looks on, calling upon centuries of experience when he tells him, with great confidence, "I don't believe in coincidences. If fate wants something to happen, it will happen. It seems as though fate wanted me to find you."

“Huh…” Max gives that one some thought.

Of course, a thousand-year-old, bitter-with-life sorcerer would think there was no such thing as coincidences.

Merlin pulls him out of his train of thought. “So, I think we should lay some ground rules, if that’s all right by you. Considering we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other should you decide to take on a mentorship with me, for your magic.”

“Ground rules, eh?” Max snorts. “So, you’re playing the fatherly card now?”

“Absolutely. First things first, if you do think about shouting at me for something I _really_ didn’t do – like stealing your laundry when you _clearly_ lost it in the first place– I’m not going to put up with that,” A small smile tugs at the corners of Merlin’s mouth. “Right now? Yes, you have… every reason to shout and scream and be angry. But later? You don’t want to get on my bad side, my friend. I think it’s only fair to warn you.”

Max scowls. He opens his mouth to retort, but Merlin beats him to it.

“I _will_ be the strict parent in two seconds flat if I have to.” He smirks at the way Max’s jaw drops about five inches. “I may look your age, but I’ve got a few years on you yet. Don’t think I won’t be making up for all the time I missed during those rebellious teenage years of yours,” he teases.

“I didn’t have rebellious teenage years,” Max quips, pouting in much the same way that Merlin does when something isn’t going his way, which only makes Merlin laugh.

“Bollocks. You’re my son,” _that_ feels weird to say, “You think you’re fooling anyone? Everyone had them at some point…. _Me_ more than anyone.” He grimaces and stands to stretch his legs. “I have over two centuries of them that I’m still trying to live down.”

Max raises an eyebrow. “Oh? Care to share-?”

“Absolutely not.”

Max shrugs like it was worth a shot. But he gives Merlin a look that says, _I’ll get you to spill one of these days_. Merlin doesn’t doubt it. But now isn’t the time. “Also, what you said about helping me with my magic? That’s something else I really wish I could’ve had when I was growing up. You’d have been a great help nine years ago.”

“Someone to mentor you,” Merlin nods, remembering the relief he’d felt when he finally met someone who not only kept his secret, but mentored him until his powers were strong enough that there was nothing left to be taught. Merlin had had Gaius. And now Max has Merlin. He can’t let his own family down now, not when he’s been given a second chance.

Max isn’t stupid. He sees the pain seeping through beneath the hardened, worn exterior of the man with a twenty-four year old’s body and a thousand year old’s eyes.

Merlin still has life in him, but his hope has been dying, flickering in and out for years. With Max’s reassurance that he will not, in fact, be abandoning Merlin for something that happened twenty-one years ago, a glimmer of hope seems to be rekindled in Merlin’s soul.

**::{}{}{}::**

Merlin’s newfound relation to Max makes things just a little awkward, although it’s most likely a temporary thing. After all, delivering the news that you had a hand in the creation of your roommate can’t exactly blow over without a little discomfort at the get-go.

Max doesn’t speak much to Merlin for the next week and a half, other than a quick “’G’morning” or “Think your socks got mixed with my laundry. Here.” Merlin always retaliates with a brief, “There’s coffee in the kitchen, help yourself.” As if he has to offer. If Max sees something he wants, he doesn’t ask questions. Coffee is not an exception; perhaps he _is_ Merlin’s son after all.

Not much else can be said for Max. Mostly, he gets on with his day and does his schoolwork, doesn’t go to parties as per usual, and types away at the old electric typewriter that he keeps in his room. Merlin listens to the sound of _clack-clacking_ follow by a _click_ and a _ding!_ Max always has papers due for some class or another.

Is this what it’s like to be a parent to a uni student? It’s a lot less work than Merlin would have expected.

Maybe that’s the problem: he doesn’t feel like he’s doing enough – he _should_ say something else, try to talk to Max, really try to teach him what he knows. But then he reminds himself that these kinds of things take time to get used to. Unlike Merlin, Max hasn’t had a hundred and fifty lifetimes to adapt to new situations, and while this one is a little trickier to wrap one’s head around, Merlin wishes they could stop playing the silent game. He doesn’t doubt that Max does, too.

But Merlin understands why they’re both doing it. He remembers how _he_ felt when Gaius told him that his father wasn’t dead, the day he and Arthur were meant to travel to the home of the last Dragonlord and save Camelot. Again. It had just been another quest with the future of the kingdom hanging in the balance when Gaius dropped the big news.

Oh, by the way, Merlin, your father isn’t dead. Also, you’re the next Dragonlord. Anyway, good luck with the quest, tell the great Dragon I said ‘Cheerio.’

Merlin had been angry.

Hell, he’d been furious. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all Gaius, and when he _did_ meet his father, he’d been disappointed – at first. But then, all it took was a day, and his father began to warm up to him. He’d called Merlin _son._

Until that point, Merlin hadn’t known the feeling of being on the receiving end of fatherly pride; when Balinor died, Merlin finally understood the meaning of making his father _proud_.

Max, on the other hand, is a kid of the late twentieth century, and he wasn’t raised by someone like Gaius. He’d gone through the foster care system, lived with nice enough foster parents for ten years out of twenty-one, and grew up a decent enough bloke who kept his magic hidden, for the most part, much like Merlin had done when he was Max’s age. It’s discernible from Max’s semi-awkward silence that he’s avoiding the idea of using his magic again, even under the mentorship of someone who knows what they’re doing.

Max, being the son of Merlin, is powerful; Merlin can sense the extent of it, and so can his magic. Max had feared it as a child, and it had shown on his face when regaling Merlin of the whole Murphy tragedy. Max _still_ fears it. The things he can do with his magic? The prospect frightens him. And what might happen if he ever let his power get out of control.

That thought helps Merlin make the decision.

Another Saturday rolls around, and with it comes Merlin’s nerve to have a real _talk_ with his son.

Merlin will mentor Max in the ways of Old Religion if it takes years and years. He’ll do it; he’ll prove what a good father he can be. And he’s not going to take no for an answer.

Max has to overcome this.

**::{}{}{}::**

The more he looks, the more Merlin realizes how much of a resemblance there is between the two of them. Gods, no _wonder_ they get confused in public for brothers.

Max really is his father’s son, from the raven curls to the bowed mouth, the dimples, even the slightly-larger-than-average ears. He’s what women (and some men) might call a looker. A very modest one, but definitely a man who isn’t hard on the eyes. The only things different from Merlin are the eyes, which are Fionna’s, as well as the shape of Max’s nose, which is longer than Merlin’s and more turned up.

Merlin is in the sitting room, looking over Max’s most recent history paper for mistakes, when Max strolls out of his – no, wait, he’s coming from _Merlin’s_ bedroom, the bugger – toting two thick, dusty volumes in his arms.

“I found these,” he announces. The way he says it makes him sound just like a kid who’s won a scavenger hunt and expects a prize. Merlin looks up from the paper.

In Max’s arms are one of Merlin’s journals, and the Grimoire that Gaius gave him centuries ago.

“Why do you have those?”

“Thought you’d tell me,” Max replies smugly, and dumps the hefty books onto the coffee table. “What’s this one?” he asks, pointing to the leather-bound tome on top. Merlin huffs.

“A journal.”

“Ohh, so you keep a diary then?” Max snickers, snatching up the book and flipping to a page at random. It takes a few minutes for Merlin to wrestle the damned  thing out of Max’s viselike grip, finally prying the journal away.

“It’s a record of my life in Camelot. Mostly, it’s about the story of King Arthur. My life in the kingdom, from the moment I met the man, to the moment he died.” He holds the volume lovingly in his hands, checking over the binding again and running a finger along the spine. “The best years of my life, and the worst,” he murmurs, thumbing the book open to the first page before snapping it quickly shut. “And you are not to go snooping through my things, you arse.”

“So that book is basically just about Arthur Pendragon and you?”

“Yes?” Why must Max continue to ask so many pointless questions?

“Oh my god,” the expression on Max’s face is _not_ boding well for Merlin’s sanity. “Do _not_ tell me you had a _thing_ for King Arthur bloody Pendragon.”

Sure enough, Merlin can feel his face turning a furious red before he ducks down to stow the journal behind him until he can get it back to his room; he’ll have to find a better way of hiding it next time. Not that there’s any incriminating evidence that would outright prove the dirty thoughts that must be brewing in Max’s head, but who knows just how deeply the man reads into things.

“Oh shit, oh my god, you _did,_ didn’t you?” Max looks like Christmas and New Year’s have come early. “You mean to tell me that the scholars were leaving out one very, _very_ crucial detail in the Arthurian legend?”

“What, that the famous wizard with the ridiculous hat was into men as well as women?” Merlin rolls his eyes and gets up a little too quickly to go fix himself something for lunch.

Max snorts. “Well there’s that, but I meant the _romance_.” He says it like it’s obvious. “The scandal was never with Guinevere and Arthur and Lancelot, it was the affair between King Arthur and the sorcerer!” He grins in triumph, like it’s the revelation of the century. And it would be, if it were true. Which it is _not._ “What was it like? With King Arthur? God, he must have been amazing in b-”

Merlin makes a sound like he’s being strangled, bringing a hand up and running it across his face. “Okay, let me make _one_ thing perfectly clear, Max, Arthur and I were _not_ having an affair.”

“What?” Max’s expression goes from elated to disappointed in less than a second. “But you just said--”

“I didn’t say fuck all, Max, you made an assumption based on my reaction to _liking_ Arthur, and you took that to mean we were having a secret affair that nobody ever knew about?” Merlin’s laughing, in a way that one can only laugh when nothing makes sense anymore and nothing is actually all that funny, just horribly frustrating. “Trust me, if anything like that had ever happened between us, someone would have found out eventually, and that would have been the end of me.” He runs a finger across his throat to further his point. “As far as I know, Arthur never even…” he can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. Max can read the expression clear as day, though.

“What, was the bloke straighter than the pole that was apparently shoved up his arse at birth?”

“S’far as I know,” Merlin mutters, but then he thinks about what Max said. “And he did _not_ have a pole shoved up his arse. He was just a prat.”

“Yeah?” Max goads with a wag of his eyebrows.

“A prat with a silver spoon in his mouth and some issues in his teenage years – murdering innocents, mostly,”

“Christ,”

 “- But his head eventually made it to the right place. Once I met him.” His tone is milder, and his shoulders hunch forward like they always do when he doesn’t know how else to fill the silence.

“You can’t be sure that he didn’t love you just the same, Merlin” Max says. He’s trying to be comforting, but Merlin brushes it off.

“Of course he cared for me but that’s, that’s not the point – and when did I ever say I…? I mean, I loved him like a friend and I knew him for ten years of my life, obviously, but I never…” Merlin splutters, fishing for a better answer.

Max has the wickedest look on his face. His cheeks are practically dimpling from the smile he gives Merlin. “Oh, it’s pretty obvious, mate. The way you talk about him?”

Merlin attempts to recover what's left of the rapidly crumbling conversation as he pulls his scattered thoughts back together. “He was my king,” he tries again, calm. “I respected him as such. And of course I cared about him, he was my friend. And he thought as much of me. Granted, he never _said_ as much until his final years,” without doing it on purpose Merlin’s prattling gets quieter, until he’s trailing off.

“I’ll bet you cared about that man more than you cared about your own well-being,” Max says, his own voice nearly a whisper. He leans forward in the recliner while Merlin, stewing in his thoughts on the ratty sofa, doesn’t respond. “How can you be sure he didn’t feel those feelings right back, eh?”

Merlin shrugs halfheartedly. “Guess I’ll never know. It doesn’t look like he’s ever coming back.”

“He will,” Max assures him, even though he couldn’t possibly know. “I know he will, just like the legend says, he’s the Once and _Future_ King, not just the _Once_ King. He’ll come back.”

With a sigh, Merlin offers up another shrug, and shuffles into the kitchen to make himself something that isn’t beans on toast like it has been the past four mornings. They really need to do some real grocery shopping; Max is a bottomless pit. Merlin should have expected as much from a twenty-one year-old man. Boy. Whatever. Merlin is so old that even the oldest mortal man in the world is just a young boy by comparison.

“Well, when Arthur does come back, just make sure to double check on the whole, y’know, sexuality thing. Who knows?” Max leans back against the doorframe to the sitting room, arms crossed loosely. The simpering look on his face is the only warning Merlin gets before he says, “You know, I’ve always wanted to be part of a royal family. Having the king of Camelot for a stepfather? Might not be so bad.”

His cheeky smirk is wiped clean off when he catches sight of Merlin’s warning glare, and he knows it’s time to run.

**::{}{}{}::**

After that, talking is a lot easier, much like it had been for the first few months of living together. Before the whole F bomb (the “Father” bomb) dropped.

Tuesday.

March has decided that London is going to make up for the one nice day it had in February, and thus pummels Merlin and Max’s flat with gusts of wind and rain and absolutely no mercy. It appears that Max’s mood is no better than the weather, because when he slams open the door after a long day at uni, his expression is stormy.

“My dad called today,” he snarls, tossing down his bag as he shakes the rainwater from his hair like a wet dog.

Merlin, hearing the door slam from his seat in the kitchen, pads out to the sitting room in a pair of mismatched socks, loose jeans, and a sweatshirt that reads, “ **Class of ’62** ” on the front. He frowns when he sees Max in such a state. “Your dad?”

“ _Yes,”_ hisses Max, brushing past Merlin to go make himself a pot of coffee. He really should knock it off with the caffeine, Merlin thinks, or else he’ll run his blood pressure through the roof.

“And?”

“ _And,_ he wants to know why my grades are slipping.” The sound of a coffee pot being filled with water is all Merlin can hear for a few seconds. When the water shuts off, Max clinks the pot into the coffee machine and switches it on. The low hum of the machine fills the kitchenette, and Max turns to head back into the sitting room. Merlin moves out of the way this time, but he follows Max. Abruptly, Max says, “He thinks I should move back in with him and mum.”

Merlin’s heart sinks in his chest. “What? Why?”

“They think it might have something to do with my being on my own. It’s so… _ugh_ , I just can’t understand it. It’s ludicrous. And… and they think that it might have something to do with you.”

“With _me?”_ Merlin gapes.

“They think you might be a bad influence on me.”

“But they’ve never even met me!” Merlin protests. Max nods sadly.

“That’s what I said, but they won’t hear it. Dad especially.” He sinks onto the sofa, even though he’s always preferred his recliner, and covers his face with a hand. “For months, I barely hear anything from either of them. I mean, at least mum e-mails sometimes! And then this?” His voice is muffled through his hand. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Merlin hums, taking a seat next to Max, who scoots over to make room.

“I don’t want to go back,” Max whispers.

Not really knowing what else he should do, Merlin wraps an arm around the younger man’s shoulders. Max doesn’t push him off, instead leaning into Merlin’s shoulder, biting his lip while he thinks. Merlin understands why any uni student would want some independence from their parents; what he doesn’t understand is the way Max talks about his old home. It’s like he’s afraid. Something cold pools in Merlin’s gut.

“Max?” he asks, keeping his arm securely around Max’s shoulders. “Tell me something.”

“Hmm?”

“How did you even know about the meeting at the church, when you took me after I, ehm, fell off the wagon?”

It’s a loaded question, but Max answers him in a hushed voice. “My dad used to go to the meetings.”

“…Ah.”

After that, Merlin doesn’t expect that Max will want to talk anymore about it, but he’s surprised when he does.

“It started when I was maybe fifteen or sixteen, a few years after they signed the adoption papers and took me home with them.”

As the story starts to unfold, Merlin discovers that, as it turned out, Max’s foster father was something of an alcoholic himself, with symptoms much more apparent around the time that Max was sixteen years old.

“Mum was always at work, so she never really heard the worst of it. But cripes, could the man shout,” he catches the look on Merlin’s face and leans back, out of Merlin’s grasp. “No, he never hurt me. I swear.”

“But you said he shouted. What did he say to you?” It’s clear that Max is trying to play it all off, and Merlin won’t let him do that. “Sometimes it doesn’t have to be physical for it to hurt you, Max. Did he ever seek help?”

“Well…” Max sniffs, not looking up. And then he talks about begging his foster mum to borrow the keys to the car one evening, before she walked down to a friend’s house for a game of cards.

Max had known how to drive since he was thirteen, when he “borrowed” a car for a quick joy ride with a friend, before the two of them were caught and nearly locked up, even though they’d only been little kids.

“I’d been keeping track of the AA meetings in the area, and the St. Joan’s Church was only a few miles away. The night I asked for the keys, I think my mum knew what I was planning. She didn’t stop me.”

“So how did you get your father to go with you?”

With a small smile, Max pushes himself up from the sofa. At the sound of the beeper from the coffee machine, he gets up completely and shuffles toward the kitchenette. “You want coffee?”

Merlin, while a trifle thick-skulled at times, knows when someone is trying to change the subject.

When Max returns with a full mug, Merlin narrows his eyes until Max gives in. With a sigh, he sits down again, sets the mug on the table, and replies, “I did the same thing for him that I did for you. Told my dad I wanted to go for a drive – granted, I had to tell him it would be good practice for my driver’s test. He didn’t seem to care much that my driver’s test wasn’t for another two years.” He shakes his head wearily. “And so I drove up to the church with him in the passenger’s seat, we got out of the car, my dad took one look at the place…”

Something seems to deflate in him, but Merlin coaxes him to continue with a gentle nod, moving Max’s mug away so he can have a place to rest his hands, which are shaking visibly. Merlin can’t tell if it’s nerves, or just the heaping quantities of caffeine that Max continuously ingests on a regular basis.

“It was like he was expecting it. All he did was look at me once, and then he walked inside without even waiting for me. Couple weeks later he’d tell me that he was doing better, that _I_ was the reason he was doing better. I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s never too late to try and help.”

 The weight of the whole thing slams into Merlin like a two-ton anvil. Max has had to do this twice now. For both of his fathers.

Gods, what has he _done?_

“I know what you’re going to say,” Max mutters, turning to give Merlin a blunt look from over the rim of his coffee mug. “So let me stop you there; I don’t want to hear anymore ‘I’m sorries’ or ‘it’s all my fault.’ You said enough. My foster dad did, too… I’m not angry with you for it. It happens.” He shrugs so hard that his shoulders brush the tips of his earlobes.

It’s then that things begin to click into place for Merlin. Max’s almost too laid back attitude, the abrasive quality of his sense of humor, the introversion and lack of close friends, and the fact that he’d been so upset with Merlin when he came back to the flat to find him drinking. _No, this isn’t happening again_ , he’d said when he’d seen Merlin, inebriated and talking nonsense on the sofa.

With a chill, Merlin realizes that Max hadn’t been talking about Merlin’s past experiences with alcohol, but Max’s experiences in dealing with someone having a meltdown much like his.

Merlin opens his mouth to apologize, but Max clicks his tongue like a mother hen and wags a finger in Merlin’s face. “What did I just say? No more apologies. We’re done talking about this – no arguing, all right?”

Resigned to the fact that Max won’t be swayed into saying anything more on the subject (at least, for now), Merlin agrees, although his lips purse into a pout. While it’s frustrating, he tells himself that every conversation like this brings him one step closer to getting to know his son.

The next time he glances over at Max, the kid is staring at him, wearing an expression that’s hard to read. Merlin instinctively bristles at the unexpected attention. “What?” he asks.

Max shakes his head. "Call me odd, but if you weren't technically related to me, I'd definitely ask you out, you're just that cute."

Of  _course,_ just when Merlin thinks he's gotten used to Max's quirks, the kid pulls crap like this. "Please, never say that to me again."

"Absolutely."

"I'm serious, Max."

"Good thing too, otherwise I might just go looking for another roommate." Max sighs, inspecting his fingernails like they're suddenly the most interesting thing in the room.

"What, you mean one that might actually share a bed with you?"

" _Ouch,_ that one actually stung a little." Max holds a hand over his heart. "Low blow, mister wizard. Low blow."

"Yeah, well, if you ever say something like that to me again, I'll turn you into a rabbit for a month."

"Promise?" If it's even possible, Max's grin spreads even wider.

"Oh, piss off."

"Is that any way to set an example for your son?" Max's smile is wide enough that Merlin worries it might split his face in two.

"I think it's a bit late to try setting any examples."

Max nods sagely, stroking his chin like a wise old man. "In that, you may just be right."

"And anyway, I can see that you're already a lost cause." Merlin doesn't try to keep the smirk out his voice. Max's mouth hangs open in exaggerated shock, and the faintest gasp escapes him. Always with the dramatics.

"I will have you know that I am an absolute  _dream_ compared to most kids my age."

Somehow, Merlin seriously doubts that.


	11. Home Enough For Now

Arthur stands in front of him, a look of complete and utter disappointment painting his perfect features, twisting them into something far uglier. His hands are curled into fists, his red cloak draped in elegance over his strong frame, red like blood and terrifying to behold. Excalibur shines like new in its sheath at Arthur’s waist.

Merlin is on his knees, gazing up at his king, grief-stricken.

“You’ve failed me, Merlin.”

“No.”

“You have. You gave up, Merlin, and I thought you could hold on just a little longer. I guess that assumption was little more than fantasy.”

“No! I tried, I tried so _hard_ ,” Merlin pleads, lost for breath, shaking and desperate to make amends, even if he can’t fix everything he’s done. He can’t take back thirteen hundred years’ mistakes. “I swear I did, Arthur, but living for twelve and a half centuries isn’t _easy.”_

“As if anything ever _is._ No more excuses. I… I want nothing to do with you, Merlin, I can’t do this,” his gaze falls for a minute and his shoulders heave, “Not anymore.” Arthur’s hand goes to the pommel of his sword, but then it goes slack like he’s decided against something, and he lets his hand fall back to his side. He throws his chin up, proud and regal, every bit the king he was born to be; but there’s a darkness in his eyes that makes Merlin cower on the hard ground.

“ _Please,_ Arthur. Please. I’ll try again.” But his voice has already gone softer. There’s no controlling the way he can barely hear it himself, let alone force it to be loud enough to reach Arthur’s ears.

Arthur shakes his head with a glower worthy of even Uther Pendragon. “You lied to me, you _betrayed_ me, you gave up waiting for me and searching for me – did you not assume I would be in Avalon after all this time? Did you really think those other people were really _me?_ You’ve disappointed me.” He takes a step closer to a trembling Merlin.

“I will save Albion without you, and you will not try to help me.”

“Arthur-”

“We are done, Merlin. Finished.” Any trace of familiarity is gone from him, and suddenly Arthur is all stone cold formality, no longer someone whom Merlin knew during the best years of his life. “I’m afraid this is goodbye.”

With a sweep of his crimson cloak, gold crest and all, Arthur turns, walks briskly away and out of Merlin’s view, which is blurred by the onslaught of fresh tears. He feels like he’s going to be sick. “No… no, Arthur…”

**::{}{}{}::**

Merlin bolts upright in bed, wrenching the covers off him while still half-asleep, tears streaming down his cheeks against his will. “ _No!”_

He doesn’t realize he’s sobbing, until he goes to cover his face with his hands and brings them away soaked. When he tries to steady himself with a hand he nearly falls off the bed; he must’ve been sleeping much closer to the edge of the mattress than he’d thought.

Someone flicks the light on. Merlin throws a hand over his eyes to block out the offensive brightness.

“What’s going on, what happened?” Max’s eyes are wild and a bit sleep-heavy, and of course he’s wearing another “borrowed” t-shirt of Merlin’s (it’s one that has the words _Pink Floyd_ in black and white, complete with a triangle refracting a ray of light into a rainbow) but he’s alert enough and concerned enough to not be stumbling over his own, two, bare feet.

When he sees the state Merlin’s in, balanced dangerously at the edge of the bed and shaking hard, his shoulders fall.

“I thought they’d stopped,” he says, kicking a few miscellaneous books and papers away to make a path to Merlin’s bed. Merlin accepts Max’s hand gratefully and only fumbles a little when he throws off the rest of the covers, allowing himself to be helped to his feet. He mumbles a weak “thanks,” to which Max answers, “I’ll make us some tea, yeah?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. It might be half-two in the morning, but that hardly matters when your shell-shocked flatmate, who is also your father and suffers from chronic insomnia, needs to have another chat over a good cuppa. And maybe some shortbread biscuits, too.

**::{}{}{}::**

Max takes Merlin to meet his parents two days later.

He fills Merlin in on anything he thinks he should know on the short drive over to the Hornith residence, and Merlin files everything away in the back of his mind. Max’s dad is a philosophy professor; his mum is stay-at-home, and can always be expected to be found fiddling away in the kitchen over a pie or tray of cookies. To Merlin’s ears, the woman sounds painfully like Hunith, as Max continues to describe his foster mother.

When they arrive at the house situated on a quaint little road with light traffic and a nice row of shops just across the street, Max rings the doorbell and is answered almost immediately.

“Max!” the woman at the door cries, throwing herself at Max before he can stop her.

Merlin studies the woman while she continues to embrace the life out of Max. The woman is about a head shorter than both men, with dark brown hair hanging just below her shoulders. It looks so stiff and straight that Merlin suspects she’s gone over it one too many times with a straightening iron and hair fixative.

Soon enough, though, Mrs. Hornith gives her son some room to breathe and turns on Merlin with a wide smile. “And this must be the flatmate! Heard all about you, Emmet,” she says with a knowing look.

“Um, you have?” Merlin wonders what she means by that. Just how _much_ has Max told her about Merlin? She couldn’t possibly know about…

“Both of you come in, please, please, I’ve got a strawberry and rhubarb pie in the oven. We’ll have tea! Sound like a plan?”

Merlin gives her a tight-lipped smile and nods, still unsure.

But then Max elbows Merlin in the gut the second Mrs. Hornith turns to lead the way into the sitting room, and he leans in to whisper, “No worries, she has no idea about the family stuff.” Then he frowns a little, and adds as an afterthought, “Although, she _might_ suspect that the two of us are dating. She knows perfectly well I’m as gay as they come.”

“Dating!”

“Shh!” Max takes Merlin by the arm and guides him through the door to follow Mrs. Hornith past the sitting room and towards what must be the kitchen, if the heavenly smell is anything to go by. “If she asks, just deny everything.”

“Well _obviously--_ ”

“Are you boys all right?” Mrs. Hornith picks that moment to ask. Max lets go of Merlin’s arm.

“Everything’s fine, mum,” says Max. Merlin nods in a show of agreement. With another bright smile, Max’s mum leads the way into a very spacious kitchen, complete with a state-of-the-art stainless steel refrigerator, and an island with a granite marble countertop. The space is immaculate, nothing out of place.

“I’ll put the kettle on. Then we can all sit down and talk.” Mrs. Hornith presses a hand to Max’s shoulder in some form of unspoken communication, and Max grabs a chair at the little table by the closest window and sits. He gestures for Merlin to do the same, and they both have a seat as they wait for the water to boil.

Satisfied that the two boys have made themselves at home, Mrs. Hornith leaves the kitchen. Not a moment later, Merlin and Max both hear the woman calling up the stairs. “James! Ja-ames! Max is here, he’s brought company!”

Someone calls back down, although the words are hard to hear. Max rolls his eyes. “That’ll be dad.” Merlin gives him an uneasy look. When Max catches it, he shakes his head vigorously. “No, really, he’s just fine. He’s a great man, I promise, he’s doing much better since he started going to meetings.”

Merlin nods in the reassurance that he believes Max, although he’ll be keeping an eye out for sure.

**::{}{}{}::**

Merlin loves Mrs. Hornith so, so much – he loves her homemade rhubarb pies _almost_ as much.

Max’s father is the opposite of Mrs. Hornith in terms hyperactivity. While Max’s mum is constantly moving around and chattering blithely about anything and everything, Mr. Hornith is a soft-spoken man, also very kind, and quick with a joke. Merlin’s pleasantly surprised.

And, following his better judgment, he makes the decision not to tell them who he actually is; not the Merlin part, and certainly not the father part. He assumes that they’ve begun to suspect that Merlin might be a long lost relative, if the shared looks and subtle inspections of Merlin’s face and mannerisms are telling Merlin anything but they don’t question it too much. They’re just happy that their son is happy, and has a decent flatmate.

Just for good measure, though, Merlin reaches out with his magic to make sure their strings of consciousness don’t hold anything sinister in them. Not a trace.

Mrs. Hornith talks animatedly about the first months of Max’s life with them, with Max throwing in his own two cents every once in a while, and Mr. Hornith interjecting at times to correct something.

Max also opens up about the months leading up to Merlin’s move-in, his brief encounters with thugs on the street – Mrs. Hornith looks downright sick with worry until Max assures that he’d been magicking himself out of situations like that for years.

The Horniths know about Merlin’s magic, of course.

Max probably would have told them the minute he found out. At least Merlin’s real identity is still safe, even if it means he still gets pummeled with questions about, “how far along are you with using your gifts? Maxie here--” “Mum, please don’t call me that--” “Max here has been making plates and flatware float around the kitchen ever since he moved in! His father nearly had an aneurism, I’ll grant him that, but we got used to it soon enough. Max never made anything blow up anyway--” “Dear, I think you’re forgetting about my mother’s teapot. Remember? Six years ago..” "Oh, hush.."

 

It goes on like that for a little while.

 

Merlin happily sips at his tea and enjoys the conversations about Max’s childhood perhaps a little too much. He laughs loud and long at the story of Max setting his eyebrows on fire with a spell he’d found in a book when he was just fifteen.

Merlin wonders what book Max could have been looking through. Like Merlin, Max’s magic comes naturally, easily. Powerful was an understatement, the last time Merlin thought about it. Reaching out with his own power now, Merlin can sense energetic, raw, young power, weaker than his own and still somewhat untamed, unharnessed for the most part. But there's potential. Merlin wonders in astonishment how Max has been able to keep it so well under control for over two decades.

It surprises Merlin just how _calm_ the Horniths are about their foster son’s magic. Max is lucky he was taken in by them, and not another pair of mortals who would send him away to the madhouse for treatments. Or worse, he could have been taken in by another sorcerer – one with far worse ideas about how to put Max’s power to use.

Mrs. Hornith admits she wanted to spend more time with her son, but the past year has been incredibly busy.

She also admits that her husband has been searching for a job, ever since Max moved out. Mr. Hornith fills in the details.

At first, he’d gotten a temporary post at a pharmacy, stocking shelves and whatnot. When he talks about finally getting the job as a philosophy professor, his face seems to light up under the heavy-rimmed reading glasses. His eyebrows are characters of their own, going up and down constantly and putting creases in his forehead, where his hairline is already receding quite a bit.

From the sound of it, Mr. and Mrs. Hornith are doing well. Mr. Hornith has been doing exceptionally well ever since going to meetings. But they’ve been enormously busy, trying to keep up with bills.

“I’ve been selling some of my cooking to the bakery across the street. By the sound of it the customers have become very partial to my blueberry tarts,” Mrs. Hornith says, pride in her voice. Merlin’s not surprised. After the strawberry rhubarb pie, he can only imagine what other treats the woman can whip up. She’d even do well to open her own bakery.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly!” Max’s mum says when Merlin suggests she do just that. “But they like the blueberry tarts, and that’s what matters.”

“I like those tarts too you know, so don’t sell them all, dear,” Mr. Hornith jokes, and all four of them laugh. Merlin can’t shake the feeling that he’s found a family again.

**::{}{}{}::**

Sunday dinners at the Hornith house become a regular occurrence after that.

On top of that, Merlin’s secretly found himself a job working at a candy store a few miles away, where Max wouldn’t accidentally run into him. This isn’t something he wants Max to know about just yet. After meeting the Hornith family and getting to know their situation, he feels it’s only right.

Technically, Merlin could just pull from one of his many savings accounts, but that would feel like cheating. If he’s going to do the father thing, he’s going to do it right, god dammit. Go big or go home, right?

So he sells chocolate tiramisu truffles and peanut clusters and marshmallows on a stick, and sometimes he even brings home a box of candy that weighs nearly two kilos or more (the employee discount is fifty percent off, after all).

Max assumes that Merlin brings home boxes of chocolates every so often to make up for Merlin’s lost time as a parent. While that’s partly true, Merlin also does it because the older woman who works at the store, Lorelei, always insists that he take a box home. “Put something on those skinny bones, you’re positively scaring me to look at you!”

Merlin is _not_ skinny, and he says as much to anyone who will listen. At least, he’s not as skinny as he’d been in, say, the early nineteenth century. Living as the manager of a poorhouse in London’s East End hadn’t been easy – not that much of his life had ever been easy. Now he feels like Max’s eating habits have begun to rub off on him; Merlin eats nearly as much as that kid. Without the twenty-whatever-year old metabolism that his eternal youth had gifted him with, Merlin’s certain he would have been fattened up like a cow for slaughter. 

He tries to work out, he does. He just always seems to have an excuse not to. Sometimes, he’ll let Max drag him over to the fitness center on Fortis Green road, a small place called Fit Like a Glove, where the trainers who walk around observing everyone wear matching purple tracksuits and the fakest grins that Merlin has ever seen on a human.

Months pass like that, with Max slugging through his schoolwork and dragging Merlin to do some _musculation_ or whatever, Merlin heads to work in the mornings just after Max leave for class, and gets back to the flat early in the afternoons before Max can get back.

It’s a little weird, in a way. And maybe it’s perfect and works just right, but Merlin can’t help but wonder what it would be like if he looked about thirty years older, living with his son as a single dad, putting his kid through university like a normal parent would. He loves Max to pieces, but the guilt of leaving his mother before he ever knew about the kid’s existence still gnaws away at him, every so often.

**::{}{}{}::**

A little over a year of Merlin and Max’s flat-sharing passes them by. Max, unrelenting, continues to steal band tees from Merlin for pajama shirts, and Merlin continues to school Max on using magic as best he can. There’s a lot to learn.

Merlin continues to work at the candy store, Max gets a piercing in one ear, and the two of them are thick as thieves. The magic lessons do well to strengthen the bond that’s already there.

By the end of one year, Max can do things that most magic users wouldn’t be able to do in ten.

Come June, Max graduates from university.

**::{}{}{}::**

They get back to the flat late that night, after going out to a celebratory dinner at Toff’s Fish and Chip Shop, then going for drinks with some of Max’s friends. Not exactly his closest friends, but they happen to talk to Max every once in a while and include him in group projects, so they’re all right. They take to Merlin as well, even if it’s just because the two are so similar in looks and age (well, just looks, but they wouldn’t know that).

Shutting the door of the flat behind him, Merlin reaches into an inner pocket of the light jacket he’s wearing and pulls out an envelope.

Max turns, his own jacket already flung over the reclining chair, to find Merlin holding a piece of paper out to him with a sheepish grin on his face.

“What’s this?” he asks, staring pointedly at Merlin instead of the paper. “You already took me out for dinner _and_ paid for the drinks, I don’t need anything else.”

“It’s just a card,” Merlin says with an exasperated roll of his eyes. “Open it, will you?”

The envelope in thin, and Max is in no hurry to tear the thing open. With a huff, he runs a finger beneath the fold at the top and pulls out the drugstore greetings card. He tosses the empty envelope to the side and holds up the card.

Grinning, he looks at the words on the front. “You wanker,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

The card reads, “Congratulations, it’s a boy!” in pastel blue, block lettering. Merlin would be lying if he said he didn’t see Max hurriedly swipe away a tear before opening up the glittery card to view the rest of it.

Aloud, Max reads, “ _Dear son…_ ” he stops, and Merlin can’t help the tears from springing to his eyes when he sees the same happening to Max. Max reads on, “ _Dear son, this past year you have worked so hard. I have never known someone to love school as much as you do, honestly. You’re a strange one mate, how did I get saddled with you?_ ”

Max chokes out a laugh, and Merlin does the same. But then Max rubs at one of his eyes before pushing himself to go on, “ _And you have not failed to drive me absolutely mad with your late-night study sessions and… well, somewhat interesting factoids about science fiction. Undoubtedly, you are family, and you bring out the best in others. As I’ve lived for rather a long time, I feel I should tell you that those like you, Max, are the sort that make life worth living_. _Many congratulations on your accomplishments. You deserve everything you are given, believe me. Go explore the world – hell, dare to go where no man has gone before. Much love, Merlin._ ”

Max looks up from the card, biting his lip. “Merlin…”

Merlin doesn’t need to hear anymore, just watches Max’s face light up. Just as naturally as if they’d been doing it for ages, Max grabs Merlin’s wrist and tugs him into a tight embrace, comfortable in such closeness and happy just to let a few tears fall, before Max takes a deep breath and makes a point of blinking away the moisture around his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says.

“That’s not all,” Merlin answers with a sly look, pointing at the card hanging in Max’s hand.

“What?”

Merlin gestures to the card again. “Open it up.”

“Um, I just did? You saw me…” but then Max takes a closer look at the inside of the card; there’s an extra flap, nearly hidden on the side without writing; the color blends in so well with the rest of it that he’d almost missed it. A pocket has been built into the card itself.

With a confused tilt of his head, Max picks at the corner of the card until the flap opens up. A small piece of paper falls to the ground. He bends down to pick it up.

“Just consider it down payment for the new flat,” Merlin says, watching Max carefully as the graduate studies the slip of paper in his hands.

“I…” Max ogles the number amount written into the pounds section of the check. “This… this is too much, I couldn’t-”

“Refuse a gift from family? Damn right.” Merlin grins with cheeky delight. He knows Max probably can’t stand to have Merlin do something so… so _frivolous_ just for him. And he clearly isn’t used to generosity of this nature. “That’s to help pay the rent for the new place when you move out.”

“What, for the next five years?!” Max squeaks, holding the piece of paper up to the light. No doubt he wants to check to see if he’s counted the zeroes properly.

Then Merlin, much to Max’s dismay, reaches into his pocket _again._ When he removes his hand, there’s another slip of paper between two of his fingers.

“The flying fuck’re you doing?” Max groans when he catches sight of the additional check, eyes widening in some mixture of trepidation and disbelief.

“ _This,”_ says Merlin, holding up the check and waving it around between two fingers, “is meant to cover your tuition bills. I know how stressful it must be to pay back the loans, both for you and your parents.”

Max fixes his gaze on the check, wondering if it’s really for him.

Merlin can feel himself inflating with joy, knowing that this kid – his kid – is going to be well looked after.

The first check is all the money Merlin’s saved up from the candy shop; the second check is a small amount (although “small” is a relative term when it comes to Merlin’s loaded bank accounts), taken from a savings account in France, listed under the alias Maxime DeGrace; the chunk of money is enough to buy Max his own flat, pay off student loans, and buy a swimming pool to go with the new flat if he ever so desired.

Max takes one look at the amount written on the slip of paper and blanches, gaping like a fish out of water.

“I can’t-”

“Yes, Max, you can. That’s what family is for.” Taking a step away from Max to take in the look of utter incredulity – utter _joy_ – Merlin waves at the check. “You worked hard to pay your own way through university with all the bills for plumbing and electric. And helped with groceries, _and_ paid half the rent, sometimes more.” He takes the briefest interlude to look down at the recently vacuumed shag carpet… damned thing seems like it’ll never get replaced. He supposes he’s become a bit fond of it anyway. “And, you let me stay here. This,” Merlin waves a hand at both checks hanging limply in Max’s hand, along with the card, “is the least I can do. Really.”

But Max looks like he’s just thought of something else. “Hang on a minute – where did you even get all this money?”

“Savings from work. And… come on mate, you’re a graduate, try using that brain of yours maybe? I might have been saving up money since, oh, the first banks were invented?” He palms his forehead mockingly, like it’s painfully obvious. “Never forget the value of having your own savings account. Try investing, it can do a load of good. Besides that…” he meets Max’s expectant gaze, “I am you biological father, after all – no, don’t give me that look - and gods be damned, I will not disappoint my only son.”

“Y-you think you could _ever_ ….”

Stunned into silence, Max stands rooted to the carpet for a solid thirty seconds, just looking at Merlin, shaking his head in disbelief. When he does break out of the trance, the first thing he does is embrace Merlin again, much more fiercely this time as he squeezes the air from Merlin’s lungs quite effectively. “You haven’t disappointed me, swear to god. You’re amazing, Merlin.”

**::{}{}{}::**

Merlin keeps the flat. And he expects that Max will come to visit at least every other weekend to continue with training. Max may be powerful, but he has a long way to go. Soon, though, their conversations quickly turn from magic, to things like Merlin’s past life in Camelot. One day, Max asks about what happened, after Arthur died.

At that point, Merlin feels comfortable enough in Max’s presence to discuss that. Not that he enjoys it, but it might help ease a little bit of the heavy feeling that makes Merlin not quite whole on the inside.

“Was there another king of Camelot, after Arthur fell?”

Merlin leans forward on the sofa, elbows on his knees, and he nods. “Briefly. First, Guinevere reigned proudly. Even with a broken heart, she was still a magnificent ruler, leading the kingdom before the final battle that tore the people apart. Guinev – Gwen, I mean, she…” tears threaten to make an appearance but Merlin chokes them down. He clears his throat to hide it. “Gwen died in the battle. She fought bravely. The five years she served as queen were the greatest years the kingdom had ever known. With the citadel a wreck, no one could technically rule from that location anymore. The kingdom as I knew it dispersed. But Arthur did have a successor, a second cousin-in-law twice removed or something.”

“Who?”

A dark look crosses Merlin’s face. “His name was Constantine.”

“All right... And?” Max urges.

Merlin bites down a lewd adjective to describe the man in question. “I refused to serve under his reign, so I left the kingdom. He was to be Arthur’s successor but, seeing as Camelot was falling to ruin, he ruled the land from Nemeth after their old king passed on. Princess Mithian of Nemeth, always the strong-willed in the worst of times, never married.” His mouth quirks up into a smile. Mithian had been incredible, never swaying under the monster that was Constantine.

He'd visited her once, while the king was away on a hunting trip, and it had only been then that she broke down, allowing Merlin to see her in the agony that Constantine clearly had her in. The kingdom was suffering, so she was, too. “Since she trusted the people of Camelot, she allowed the man to take up rule from their lands and was named queen-consort. She didn’t realize what the man would be like when she met him.” He frowns bitterly. “She grew to despise Constantine, as did the rest of his subjects.”

Max frowns, deep in thought. A fresh mug of strong coffee sits half-finished on the stained coffee table. “What made him so terrible?”

“Well, for one thing, the man is especially famous for dressing as a bishop and murdering two noble men in a monastery,"

"Good lord."

Merlin hums. "All for choosing the Church over his rule," he explains. "A nasty, merciless sort. He killed many men and women for very bad reasons. Or for no reason at all.”

“…Bastard.”

Merlin nods in agreement.

“So what happened after that?”

Merlin shrugs, but the answer still chills him. Because the truth is never kind. “He was killed. In battle. His own subjects rose against him and declared war. It seemed Mithian had organized herself a coup; the battle was over quickly.”

“Hmm,” Max mulls that over. “So she killed him? Princess Mithian, I mean?”

This is where Merlin hadn’t meant for the conversation to go. If anything, Max looks more puzzled when all Merlin does is shake his head.

“Who, then?”

He has to wait a full minute before he gets any sort of response; and when Merlin does answer, he's quiet.

“…Me.”

Max, about to take another sip of his coffee, quickly sets down his mug. “Um, wait, _you_ killed…?”

Sighing, Merlin sinks back into his seat, rubbing his face before he continues. “Mithian begged me to understand. We were saving more innocent people by ending his life. But you should realize that I didn’t _want_ to do it, Max. I never wanted to kill anyone. Never.”

“And what about all the times you killed for Arthur?”

It’s not the first time Merlin's heard the question; he’s asked himself the same thing a thousand times over. And it’s not the last time he’ll think about it, either.

“Things were different back then,” he begins, but it’s already such a rubbish excuse that he starts over. “I mean, I never wanted to kill anyone back then, either. Of course I didn’t. But Arthur’s life was my priority, my destiny. It had always been so.”

Max snorts. “Your destiny. So that’s why you don’t believe in coincidences? Because of _destiny?_ ”

Merlin knows when Max is making fun of him. It’s not playful this time, though, it’s something else; Max is trying to understand what it is exactly that makes Merlin, powerful-sorcerer Merlin, the way he is. What makes a centuries-old magic man tick. Max is absolutely right to be curious, but when it comes to Arthur and destiny, Merlin doesn’t feel like he should have to explain himself.

“Some things just can’t be helped, Max,” he whispers, lowering his head again. He can feel the man staring daggers into the top of his head, but still, Merlin won’t look up. The shame is greater than the strength he has to look his son in the face. Yes, he’s killed. And if Arthur came back, only to be threatened by another? Then yes, Merlin would kill again. But it would never feel right.

Max seems to have softened a bit, the next time he speaks up. “’M sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to… you know. And I understand the Middle Ages were brutal and all, lots of bloodshed and things, but what’s done is done. You can’t change the past, Merlin. And, if you want my opinion,” Merlin had never asked for Max’s opinion, but Max never waits to be asked, anyway, “I think that destiny can go suck it. Don’t just lie down and take it, Merlin. Don’t let this whole idea of destiny make you its little bitch. I get it, you know more than I do, clearly seeing as you’re quite a bit older than the likes of me but really. Just let people help _you_ every once in a while, all right?”

Merlin stares. It’s not what he expected to hear, not at all.

Always full of surprises, Max.

“You keep telling me how you had to leave all these people behind for centuries, because you were needed elsewhere, because you had to help someone else, because you were being called on by another King Arthur doppelganger or whatever the flying fuck you were saying earlier to hang around with until you had to leave. Again!" He throws his hands up in the air dramatically. "Sometimes, Merlin, I don’t think you know what it means to take care of your _self._ "

He stops abruptly. His breaths come a little bit quicker, and perhaps he's worn out from shouting for so long, but he doesn't appear to give a rat's arse at the moment. Merlin wonders if the neighbors across the hall could hear.

Probably. There haven't been any complaints yet, though.

“You know,” murmurs Max, breaking the tense silence after a minute or so, “if anything else, you’ve got me. Yeah?”

Merlin, tired of refusing to look his son in the eye, even after Max has told him off again and again for being the idiot that he is, makes himself sit up tall in his seat. He looks at Max, blue eyes meeting hazel, and it's not a question of whether or not he's going to be alone anymore. He smiles, eyes crinkling around the corners, just as they always do when he feels like the proud father he is.

“Thank you, Max,” he says. “I know.”


End file.
